


The Blood of the Covenant

by Kedreeva



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Because things is gettin' stitched together, Body Horror, Dragons, F/F, M/M, Minor Allison Argent/Lydia Martin, Monsters, Moral Dilemmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-30 15:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13954332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: Derek, a werewolf fallen on difficult times, saves the life of a well-known hunter- Chris Argent, heir to the illustrious Company, an organization developed to eradicate supernatural creatures of all sorts. Derek didn't mean to, but here they are, and it turns out, maybe it wasn't such a bad move after all...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



> This was a charity commission from the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction, won by ArsenicJade. Title comes from the full quote: "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."
> 
> The original prompt was: Chris is a Hunter, Derek is a werewolf, in a world where werewolves are known and Lesser. Derek is on the streets (“cold and starving”) and struggling to protect his family, and Chris encounters him. Somehow ends up deciding to help rather than to hunt Derek.
> 
> I am unaccustomed to this pairing, but I ended up having a lot of fun with the plot. I really hope you enjoy it!

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Friday Night**

 

            The scrape of scale on cement gave Chris just enough warning to step back instead of forward before he crossed the alley opening. The thing emerged from the black, its draconic head dripping a glowing, white substance that resembled angel blood too closely to be anything else. Chris’ gun was in his hand before he’d taken another step backward, but as the amalgamation drew itself to its full height, he realized the bullets would be useless. This one had golem plating on its snakelike belly, and everyone knew bullets would just glance off dragon scales.

            It gave him no more time to contemplate, striking out with gaping maw and sickle claws. Chris dropped and dove to the side, rolling to his feet, trying to find a connection, find a weakness. The previous amalgamations had stitches, where their creator had sewn bits together from various supers. The thing whipped around on him before he could get a look, tail lashing out to knock into the street lamp beside them.

            The light flickered out, sparking, and then plunged them into darkness.

            Cursing, Chris scrambled backward, but the creature had no interest in giving him space. He got two shots off before it was upon him, its piercing shriek echoing up and down the empty street. Even as it grabbed onto him, dragon claws sinking right through his body armor, he jammed the tip of his gun into the curve of its jaw and took a shot.

            White light poured out over his hands as the creature recoiled, screaming and clawing at its damaged jaw. Chris could not hear his own screaming over the ruckus, but he knew he was, the light burning his hands as he tried to shake them free of the viscous liquid. It scalded the way hot water did, rather than burning like acid, but the creature did not give it time to cool before it lashed out at him again, light blood spattering from the toss of its head as it grabbed for his gun.

            The crack of the gun sounded once before his entire hand was in the creature’s jaw and he found himself yanked off balance and dropped on the ground. It whirled and Chris steeled himself for the pounce that would likely kill him.

            But it never came.

            The creature lurched to the side, clawed hand slamming into the ground to Chris’ right, and an unholy snarl rent the night air. In the darkness, Chris could only see some kind of hulking shadow battling the amalgamation, but he recognized those sounds.

            Werewolf.

            Chris wobbled to his feet in time to stumble out of the way as the amalgamation rolled onto the cement where he’d just been, writhing and screaming in an attempt to dislodge the shifted wolf clawing at its back. Liquid light streamed from the stitching the werewolf had already torn open, splattering on the cement and slicking up the werewolf’s fur into glowing spikes. The wolf was relentless, and as Chris leaned against the wall, hands pressed over the worst of his own injuries, he realized what it was doing.

            The amalgamation, sewn together and brought to life by a madman, was coming apart at the seams under the werewolf’s assault.

            It didn’t take long. The werewolf planted its rear feet against the amalgamation and plunged both front paws into its chest and heaved. The remaining stitching gave and the beast came apart, both halves collapsing to the ground. Chris stumbled forward another few steps, hitting his knees in his attempt to avoid the head as it seized in its death throes.

            Chris grabbed his gun from where he’d dropped it without realizing, and struggled to his feet, back to the wall. He brought his gun to bear as the werewolf stood. The wolf’s skin glowed from the coating of angel blood, the gaping puncture wound in its ribs bleeding freely. It met his gaze, eyes a piercing blue, and then wavered and collapsed.

            For a long few moments, Chris just stood there, unused adrenaline making his head light and his vision spin. Or maybe that was blood loss, he thought, looking down at his shredded wrist. There was crimson blood all over his arm, seeping out from under his other hand, dripping down to the cement to join the pooling light.

            He shouldered away from the wall, stepping over the amalgamation’s carcass, boots leaving swirls of darkness in the fading liquid light pooling beneath it. Only the glow of the blood on the wolf gave away its shallow breathing, and Chris could see it had been wounded, scalded almost beyond recognition. Conscious only enough to stay shifted and bleeding out from the hole the beast’s horns had torn in its chest, it wouldn’t survive the night.

            All he had to do was walk away, and the wolf would die. One bullet and he could make sure of it, make it fast and painless. Chris lifted his gun, aiming for the thing’s heart. There was no wolfsbane, but one silver coated bullet would still do the trick. It would be over in seconds. A mercy kill, at this point.

            He lowered the gun.

            This wolf had not attacked him, had not hurt him. It had intervened in a fight Chris wouldn’t have won by himself. It had _saved_ him, and at a hefty cost to its own well-being.

            It was a monster, he told himself, but Chris wasn’t. He was not the sort of man to repay someone for saving his life by killing them.

            So instead, he knelt beside the wolf and began to peel away blood-soaked cloth. He kept his injured hand close to his body as he dug into his pocket for the spellscroll he always kept there. It wouldn’t heal everything, but it might at least stem the bloodflow from the worst of the wounds. The wolf’s own healing would have to take it from there.

            Chris grimaced at the size of the hole the amalgamation’s horn had made in the wolf’s left side. It would have been fatal to a human already, but if the wolf hadn’t been covered in ichorous, scalding light, it could have survived the puncture. Chris unrolled the scroll and began to lay it over the wound, hand splaying warm over the creature’s too-stark ribs. Maybe that was why the thing’s healing hadn’t kicked in better yet; it looked like it hadn’t had a good meal in months.

            The sigils on the scroll lit up green as they activated, and the light seeped through the paper to the wolf’s skin and began to spread. Chris watched for another few seconds, just to make sure it would take to a wolf instead of a human, but when the light stayed bright and shimmery, he clambered to his feet. The wolf struggled enough to crack its eyes open to look up at him.

            “Safe?” it rasped, voice gravel thick.

            Chris wasn’t sure whether the wolf was asking if he was safe now or if Chris was, but either way the answer was: “Yes.”

            The wolf stared for another second, and then its eyes wavered shut and its body went limp. Chris watched the transformation recede, watched claws soften to fingertips and the creature’s wolfish face become the handsome visage of a young man. Even beneath the dirt and blood, Chris could see every rib, the sharp cut of his wrist bones, the way his collarbone stuck up just a little too much. This one hadn’t had it easy, that much was clear, and Chris could not fathom what had possessed it to risk its life for a hunter.

            “Thank you,” he said aloud, pretty sure there was no way the werewolf could hear him. Still, it felt weird just leaving without saying anything at all, especially now that it looked so human, so fragile. He actually felt bad there was not more he could do in that moment, injured as he was, himself.

            Chris stepped away from the wolf, and turned to go. There was an urgent care facility a few blocks away, and a hospital a few blocks farther on to get his own injuries treated. They could patch him up well enough to get to the local Emissary for a few good spellscrolls. The Company would pay for all of it, as long as he submitted a report about the amalgamation attack, told them where to come clean it up. Hopefully the wolf was gone by then, because Chris had no intention of describing either of their actions tonight.

            How did one explain that one of the monsters he’d been hired to hunt had saved his life and, as though repaying a human debt, he had saved the monster in return?

            It was a preposterous query, and one to which he had no answer.

            Werewolves just did not save humans, period, end of story.

            Except that this one had, and Chris had no idea what to do with that.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Morning**

 

            Derek lurched back to wakefulness and halfway onto his feet before he realized he was even still alive to do so. It felt like a fever dream, seeing the amalgamation attacking someone in the dark alley, smelling fear and blood and rushing to interfere before someone died. He remembered taking a horn to his belly and the way claws raked across his back and the hot burn of angel blood drenching his skin.

            He remembered the wide eyes of a hunter, and the soft spread of a warm hand over his injuries.

            He also remembered the tug of magic from a human healing scroll, one not built to take supernatural composition into consideration. He dropped back to all fours and retched, black slime splattering onto already coated pavement as his body continued its attempt to purge the magical toxin.

            Despite a wild lack of success, he tried to stop the next heave, and the next, until his body finally calmed. He didn’t have the energy or resources left to spend on a system purge. He had specifically _asked_ if the scroll was safe, and the hunter had told him yes. He clearly hadn’t understood the question.

            “Fucking hunters,” Derek groaned, wiping at his mouth, recovered for the moment. He was going to need a meal he couldn’t afford, to gain back everything he’d just lost.

            Still, even the wrong sort of magical healing had been enough to kick start his own healing and save his life. Without it, he probably would have died right there in the street, like a Stray.

            On the other hand, he shouldn’t have needed healing in the first place. He might not have jumped in at all, if he had known the amalgamation had a _hunter_ in its sights. The fewer of _them_ , the better.

            In the distance, a low, wavering siren began to whirr, and Derek stumbled to his feet, throwing a glance at the carcass of the dead amalgamation. He had ripped out most of the stitching and tore it apart at the seams so that it lay in pieces and made it look as if several supers had died in the fight. One of them Derek recognized; the dragon, Teibris, had been killed a little less than a week ago. The others, likely only days. Whatever mad scientist had been stitching dead supers together in pieces and bringing them back to life seemed to prefer fresh meat.

            Which was why Derek needed to get out of there before the city cleaners showed up to grab the pieces. Hunter kills used to sit for days sometimes, but ever since Frankenstein’s apprentice had turned up, the cleaners had had to rush to beat him to the kills. Derek had no doubts that if they found him still there and alive, they wouldn’t hesitate to correct that oversight.

            His vision darkened for a moment as his blood decided it had better places to be than his head, and he leaned against the brick of the nearest building, putting one foot in front of the other until he made it out of the alley. Even though they were in the human part of town still, the lamp looked as though it had been destroyed in the fight between the hunter and the amalgamation.

            Swallowing the bad taste in his mouth, he staggered into the street and pointed his feet toward home. He was still a few blocks away, had been on his way back from a new job when he’d heard the ruckus in the alley. Laura would be pissed he was late. The kids would be in a pile on his bed waiting for him. He wondered if any of them would ask any further questions when they saw the state he was in, or if he could just skip the part where he was pretty sure the antibiotics he’d just gotten paid in had been liquefied by angel blood while he was saving an idiot hunter.

            An idiot hunter that, for some mystifying reason, had badly attempted to save him in return, leaving Derek confused on top of being annoyed.

            Hunters did not save supers, even ones that had saved them first.

            At least, he was pretty sure they did not do that.

            But this one had, and Derek had not saved any other hunters to compare with, so maybe hunters _did_ save supers sometimes. He was too tired for this.

            When he finally did make it through the doorway to his den, Laura took one look at him and didn’t ask any intrusive questions. She grabbed a cup and filled it with water and followed him into the room he’d claimed as his own. Sure enough, the kids he’d brought home were curled up on what passed for his bed, but they had fallen asleep waiting.

            Before he joined them, Derek took the cup from Laura and downed it, ignoring the metallic taste. They were lucky the plumbing even still worked here. Though his pack had settled close to the edge of it, The Burn had been abandoned by humans a decade ago, and most of the infrastructure was ruined. He figured one of the other supers in their building had found a Sponsor a lot better than Derek’s, and they all benefited from having the power and water kept on.

            “Are you okay?” Laura asked as Derek passed her back the empty mug.

            He sank down on the edge of the bed, and the kids cracked their eyes open and mumbled sleepy greetings at him. “I’m fine,” he lied. When she continued to stare expectantly at him, he sighed and looked away. “There was an amalgamation on my way home. It had a human.”

            “And like a reasonable person, you walked away and came home to your pack, safe and sound?” she asked, tipping her head at him.

            “Well,” he said slowly. “I came back? That has to count for something, right?”

            “No it does not,” Laura told him. “You can’t do that, Derek. You can’t put yourself in danger for people you don’t know. You can’t not come home, because we can’t lose you, too.”

            “He’ll come home,” Derek said stubbornly. “He just-“

            “He’s not coming home!” Laura burst out harshly, and then gave a frustrated huff. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. But it’s been a year, and you’re still- Uncle Peter’s not coming home. We’re on our own, and the others are counting on you and me to keep them alive. You can’t go picking fights with monsters, okay? We need you.”

            Derek looked down to where Laura had jabbed a finger, and caught Erica looking up at him, blue eyes bright in the darkness. She curled a little closer, and he pet one hand reassuringly over her blonde hair. “Okay,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

            Laura stared at him a moment longer, and then sighed. “Did they make it?” she asked, resigned. “Your human?”

            “Yeah,” he said. The hunter hadn’t been in the best shape, from the glimpse Derek had gotten of him, but he hadn’t been there when Derek woke up and they weren’t far from the human hospital on this side of the city. “But I, um… I lost Cora’s meds. In the fight.”

            Laura closed her eyes, and he could tell she was fighting off the urge to yell at him again. “Okay,” she said instead. “The important thing is you got home alive. We’ll just… I get paid tonight too, so we’ll just have to put that to meds instead of food.

            “Don’t do that,” Derek said quickly. “I think I can get more, I just need a little sleep first.”

            Laura chewed her lip, but gave up with a little shake of her head. “Okay, get some sleep. My shift starts in a little bit, so I need to go, but if I get home and you’re not here with meds, I’m going right back out again.”

            Derek nodded and the moment she was out of sight, he sagged onto the bed, the young betas scrambling to make room and then rolling back in like displaced water. He let them curve and pile around him, warm and comforting, the sound of their beating hearts enough to soothe his own. No matter how much harder it made surviving out here, he had never once regretted bringing any one of them home.

            “You smell bad,” Isaac told him when everyone had stilled. He was the youngest of the three, and the most prone to letting whatever he thought leak out his mouth. Derek just smiled. He did smell bad.

            “Sorry,” he said. “I came home before I found a place to shower.”

            Erica’s nose wrinkled. “You might want to reconsider the order of events next time if you don’t want to sleep alone,” she told him.

            He shifted so he could look at her, even though he couldn’t actually meet her eyes without getting up now. “You mean all I have to do to get rid of you is smell bad enough?” he asked with as much of a grin as he could muster.

            She shoved at his shoulder. “You better not, asshole.”

            “Language,” he admonished, and felt her duck in submission even though they were lying down and he wasn’t her alpha anyway. “And I wouldn’t. I just… didn’t think I had enough in me to go someplace else before here. I’ll go back out after a nap.”

            “We wouldn’t leave anyway,” Boyd said quietly. “You’ve smelled worse before.”

            “Thanks,” Derek said dryly, though it was secretly a relief to hear the reassurance. After the way Peter had taken off, just abandoned them with not so much as a note or a So Long Suckers, Derek had been anxious about anyone else leaving him behind.

            “I can’t believe you risked your life for a _human_ ,” Erica snorted, and then yawned hugely and snuggled her face against his side, right where the amalgamation’s horn had pierced his ribs. “They’re the worst.”

            “Yeah,” he agreed, feeling his exhaustion dragging at him. As he fell asleep, he tried not to feel the phantom trace of fingers over his skin. He tried to forget the fact that his life had been saved by a _hunter_ , of all humans.

            It had to have been a fluke. A mistake. A freak accident, somehow.

            Besides, it wasn’t like he would see the hunter ever again to ask, so there was no use dwelling on any of the millions of questions Derek found in the quiet of his room, surrounded by his pack. Some things were just better left alone.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Morning**

 

            Chris woke too early, his hand throbbing around the stitches and taut, burned skin. He fumbled around on his dresser for the salve the ER had given him, slathering it onto the burns on both of his hands more than liberally because he knew it wouldn’t matter soon. As soon as the injuries started to feel cool again, he grabbed the bottle of whatever pain meds they’d given him and downed one of the tiny pills with a few gulps of water.

            He sat on the edge of his bed with his head bowed and his better arm on his knee until the pain began to recede. The clock on his nightstand read 7:58am, an hour before his alarm was due, and he turned it off before it could ring. The previous night was a blur on his groggy consciousness, but he remembered enough. He remembered the amalgamation, and the werewolf that had saved him. He remembered being delirious from blood loss by the time he reached the ER.

            That was the only explanation he could come up with for why he had used his own healing scroll on the wolf, instead of himself. Blood loss.

            He didn’t even have any scolls left in the house- he’d been on his way to see Emissary Claudia to get more before her shop closed when he’d been ambushed. If he wanted to fix his hand better than the hospital had done, he would still need to go down to the shop, which was just as well. If anyone would be able to give him an answer about the werewolf’s behavior the night before, it would be Claudia.

            So he mustered his strength and heaved himself to his feet and immediately regretted it, but made his way to his dresser anyway. He struggled into clean clothes and strapped on his shoulder holster and snagged his keys from the dresser.

            The drive to Claudia’s Emissary shop was a lot farther than the one to the shop on his side of the city, but Claudia was a better Emissary, both in magic and in knowledge. She had pulled his ass out of the fire more than once, and seemed to have her thumb on the pulse of the supernatural world as well.

            The latter was, he knew, a result of her completely and honestly neutral dealings with both sides. A lot of Emissaries played closer to one side or the other, despite that their shops were supposed to be neutral grounds, but not Claudia. She had chased Chris out of her shop the first time, just for threatening one of her supernatural clients. Their relationship had improved in the ensuing years, so long as Chris left his profession at the door and acted civilized toward supers while she was around.

            Unfortunately, it was not Claudia behind the counter when Chris pushed open the shop’s door, but her sarcastic, teenage son. Chris held in his groan, because he didn’t like dealing with the kid, but he was the only one here on weekends, and Chris needed scrolls before Monday rolled around.

            “Good morning, Stiles,” he said patiently as he approached the counter.

Stiles startled up, knocking three things off the counter as he righted himself, and pulled the headphones out of his ears. “Mr. Argent!”

            Chris nodded, and pulled his wallet from his pocket with his good hand. “I’m just here for a couple of healing scrolls,” he said, displaying the wrap on his damaged hand. “Maybe more than a couple.”

            “Oh, man,” Stiles said, eyes widening at the bandages. “What happened? Was that you last night? Mom said there was a big dust up overnight down the street. Did you kill that amalgamation?”

            “No, Stiles,” Chris said, no idea where to even begin that story. “I just need some scrolls. Four of them will be fine.”

            “No, yeah, sure,” Stiles agreed, pulling open drawers until he found the one full of tiny, ribbon-tied healing scrolls. “I mean, of course it wasn’t you, like that thing was huge. People were saying it had the head of a dragon… can you even imagine running into _that_ in a dark alley? I bet even my mom-“

            “Stiles,” Chris said, holding up both hands to arrest the chatter. “The scrolls.”

            Stiles clamped his jaw shut and counted four scrolls off into a small paper bag. “Anything else?” he asked, small and tight, and for a second Chris actually felt bad. When Chris shook his head, Stiles added: “Then that’ll be $100 even.”

            Chris handed over the money, lamenting internally that the shop didn’t accept Company tokens. The two agencies had reached a point where the refusal of each to acknowledge the existence of the other was the only way they both remained at peace. It left hunters like Chris in a tough position; a lot of the goods the Emissaries made, like the four little scrolls he just shoved into his jacket pocket, were life saving tools, but they weren’t exactly condoned. They weren’t forbidden, either, but the Company wouldn’t pay for them.

            But the Company was also comprised of a lot of people who sat behind desks and either didn’t know or didn’t remember what it was like to face the maw of an angry monster and have to fight to the death. They didn’t have to deal with having their hands shredded or their skin scalded, or with questions like-

            “Why would a werewolf not kill a hunter?” The words fell out of his mouth like he just couldn’t keep them in, and they surprised him almost as much as they surprised Stiles.

            “Uh… what?” Stiles asked, giving him a strange look, like maybe Chris had suddenly been possessed. He certainly felt a little possessed.

            “If a werewolf and a hunter met,” Chris started, not sure what exactly he wanted to say. Stiles, as obnoxious as his chatter could be, was sharp as a tack, and if Chris was too obvious, he might guess Chris’ dilemma. “If they ran into each other on the street, and there was a fight, why would a werewolf not kill a hunter?”

            “If the hunter killed him first?” Stiles asked. “I dunno. Is this a riddle? What’s the answer?”

            “It’s not a riddle,” Chris said, a little exasperated. “If the hunter didn’t kill the werewolf first…”

            “Then the werewolf would kill the hunter?” Stiles asked. “That’s kind of the deal between you guys, right? If one of you doesn’t kill the other, it’s because they’re dead.”

            “Nevermind,” Chris snapped, wishing Claudia was here to talk to instead. He turned to go.

            “Mr. Argent,” Stiles said, before he could get more than a step away from the counter. Chris froze but didn’t turn. “He wouldn’t want to.” There was a second’s pause and then: “A werewolf would kill a hunter if he had to… but he wouldn’t want to. Killing is a hunter’s thing. Werewolves aren’t like that. They mostly just want to be left alone.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind,” Chris said carefully. “Have a good day.”

            “You too, Mr. Argent. Hope we don’t see you back for a while,” Stiles said. As odd as it sounded, Chris knew it was a well-wish for everyone. The less they saw of him, the healthier he was, and the less likely he’d hunted any of their customers recently.

            He ducked out into the light of day, the door chiming behind him, and headed for his car.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Evening**

 

            After a particularly excruciating hour of spelled healing, Chris threw away the remnants of his bandages and took as mild a shower as he could. It would be several days before the brand new skin had toughened up enough to use his hand normally, but it would heal entirely scarlessly. In the meantime, he intended to stay in and watch TV and pretend there weren’t monsters in the world.

            Which would have been a fine plan, if he could just stop thinking about the monster that had saved his life.

            Unfortunately, he could not seem to think of much else. Instead of relaxing like he wanted, he found himself prowling around his apartment aimlessly, his thoughts chasing themselves in circles.

            _A werewolf would kill a hunter if he had to._

            Chris knew that. He knew it. He’d killed a dozen of the beasts, and every single one of them would have killed him first if he’d let it. His family line was well known for hunting werewolves in particular, as far back in history as history could remember them. His _immediate_ family had an even worse vendetta against them; his younger brother had been bitten as a child, and their father had killed him, himself, rather than let him turn into such a feral creature.

            _But he wouldn’t want to._

            Chris gave a frustrated sigh and slammed his good hand down onto the kitchen counter. He didn’t need this right now, not with everything else that was going awry in his life. Between the amalgamations causing such a huge problem for the city and his own family problems at home, he did not have room to have this kind of personal moral crisis.

            He looked up, in the direction of the closed door to Allison’s room, even though he couldn’t see it through the wall in front of him. She hadn’t been home in weeks, not since he’d given her The Ultimatum. She refused to answer her phone and he was pretty sure she probably hadn’t listened to any of his messages, his pleas for her to just come back so they could talk about this.

            “This” being the way she had tried to casually tell him over dinner that she had gotten a girlfriend, and that said girlfriend was a _banshee_. Chris had not, perhaps, reacted with grace in the moment, but of all people, Allison should have known better than that. She was a hunter, from a long line of hunters, and in no position to be friendly with supers, much less romantically involved. There was no reason for a banshee to want to get close to her unless it wanted to kill her.

            All of which he had said, and in typical teenage fashion, she had responded that she wasn’t going to stop. She had told him she was old enough to make her own decisions about who she did or did not date, and that supers weren’t what he thought they were, if he would just open his eyes.

            _Werewolves aren’t like that._

            He’d told her as long as she lived under his roof, she had to abide by his rules, and his rules said she absolutely was not allowed to date supernatural monsters.

            He had come home the next day to find her gone, along with a good portion of her things, without so much as a note telling him where she’d gone.

            _They mostly just want to be left alone._

            He sighed and pulled away from the kitchen counter. He was going to drive himself up a wall thinking about this on a loop. The bottom line here was that the wolf hadn’t just not killed him. Plenty of supers had Sponsors and performed menial labor tasks for humans around the world. Plenty of supers had managed the bare minimum of not killing humans.

            _This_ wolf could have just done nothing and let Chris die, and had instead put its own life in danger to save him. It had taken on an opponent much bigger and stronger and meaner, with no obvious gain for itself. If anything, it had no reason to believe Chris would let it live if it survived the encounter. Any other hunter would probably have taken the shot. His father would have. His sister would have.

            _Killing is a hunter’s thing._

            The boy was sharp, Chris had to give him that, but he should have expected it from Claudia’s kid. She was quick as a whip and had probably taught Stiles everything she could. Maybe, just _maybe_ , if Chris came clean about what happened, about his real dilemma, Stiles could actually help him. If nothing else, he might have a phone line the Company wasn’t monitoring, to call Stiles’ mother.

            Chris grabbed his jacket and was out the door again a moment later.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Evening**

 

            “Are you ready?” Stiles asked tentatively, already looking sick. Derek couldn’t blame him; all he could smell was blood.

            “Yah,” he said around the pliers Stiles had clamped around his second canine tooth. The other already lay on the table, root and all. “Gah.”

            The door chimed softly and they both jumped. In his surprise, Stiles pulled Derek’s head down by his tooth, not hard enough to pull it out. Derek struggled to keep from nicking Stiles with any of the rest of his teeth, careful to keep his jaws open as wide as they could go while still glancing sideways to see who’d interrupted them.

            “You’re back!” Stiles exclaimed, at the same time Derek recognized the hunter he had saved the night before. He yanked his head back with a low growl, but Stiles’ grip on the pliers was exactly wrong enough to only loosen the tooth.

            “Stiles!” Derek warned around the pliers, and Stiles seemed to remember where he was even as the newcomer – hunter, _fuck_ – drew a gun and shouted a threat Derek ignored. “Toof!”

            “Oh!” Stiles said, and jerked on the pliers at the same time as Derek jerked back, which pulled the tooth the rest of the way out as Stiles popped to his feet. Derek immediately vacated the vicinity, not wanting Stiles to get hit if the hunter decided to start shooting. “This is not what it looks like! I can explain!”

            Derek kept low to the ground as the hunter tracked him, gun cocked but finger off the trigger. “Are you bitten?”

            “Am I-? No, I’m not bitten!” Stiles shouted, coming around the corner in Derek’s direction. Derek moved again, afraid Stiles would try to put himself between Derek and the hunter. Claudia would, but Claudia could make sure the hunter regretted making her. “Put your fucking gun down!”

            “Watch your fucking language!” the hunter snapped back. “Get back behind the counter, Stiles. Don’t go near this thing.”

            “Don’t- What’s he gonna do? Rip my throat out?” Stiles asked. “I’ve got his teeth!”

            “You what?” the hunter asked, gun lowering a fraction in confusion. Derek did his best impression of a stone statue, eyes riveted on the hunter for any indication he would attack. “You…” He looked over the situation, the blood coating Stiles’ hands, the tooth in the pliers, the werewolf on the floor with a bloody mouth, and Derek could _see_ the realization dawn on his face.

            “I have his teeth,” Stiles said slowly, wiggling the pliers. “It’s his blood, not mine.”

            “Why?” the hunter asked, utterly exasperated and sounding more than a little exhausted.

            Stiles glanced over at Derek uncertainly, and then shrugged. “He needed the money and I know where to sell a werewolf incisor for cash. Please don’t tell my mom-“

            “Oh, I am telling your mother,” the hunter said before Stiles could get any further. He sighed, and lowered the gun. “Get up. You,” he said, pointing at Stiles as he put the gun away, “are going to get this cleaned and those teeth packaged up. I will be back for them, and for your phone. You,” he said, flicking his eyes to Derek, “come with me. Outside.”

            “He’ll kill you,” Stiles said quickly as Derek stood and let his beta shift fade. His jaw hurt, but it would fade soon. “If you go with him, he’ll kill you. He won’t do it in the shop, my mom-“

            “I know,” Derek said, cutting him off. He looked over and forced a smile. “Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.”

            “I’ll live,” Stiles told him pointedly. “You should stay.”

            The worst part was that Derek knew he should stay. He should let Stiles call his mom, should let Emissary Claudia come in and yell at Stiles and send the hunter away and walk Derek home. But that would take a long time and his head hurt and the hunter had put his gun away already, and either way he wasn’t going to get the money to buy more meds for Cora, not from the teeth he’d just lost.

            But the hunter was not quite looking at Derek, and he smelled the way people did when they found Derek attractive. He knew that scent. He knew it, and he knew how to use it. There was a good chance he could still get that money, if he played his cards right. He just had to remember what Laura told him; Cora needed him.

            “Just do what he said, okay?” Derek told Stiles. Then he turned to the hunter and caught his eye with a low-lidded look. “Coming?” He heard the click of the hunter’s throat as he swallowed, and Derek figured this would probably be easy.

            The hunter nodded, and when Derek moved past him, he followed him out into the bright light of day. Derek wiped at the blood on his chin as he walked, wondering only briefly if he was wiping away part of his appeal, but before he could even turn around to ask, the hunter spoke.

            “Why did you save me?” he asked, and Derek turned around to look at him in confusion. “Last night… you could have been killed. You almost _died_.”

            Derek’s brow furrowed. “You almost died, too,” he said. It felt like arguing, even though he wasn’t sure what exactly they were supposed to be arguing _about_. “That thing was going to kill you, so I stopped it. Did you not want me to?”

            “No, I- I’m grateful that you did,” the guy said, though he made the word _grateful_ sound like a regret. “It’s just… I wouldn’t have done the same thing. I wouldn’t have saved you.”

            Derek looked him over once, because this was not at all what he had expected, and then he shrugged. When he spoke, his words were soft. “I guess that’s the difference between us.” Then he sighed, and dropped his gaze, because he’d spent far more time thinking about this than he cared to admit, especially to this hunter, and yet here they were. “But, you know, that’s not entirely true, is it?”

            “What do you mean?” Chris asked warily.

            Derek considered his next words carefully, aware just how thin this ice was, but he had questions of his own. “You say you wouldn’t have done the same thing, but you tried. You saved me, I know that. You could have just put a bullet in my head.” He touched his fingers to the memory of a mortal wound. “You could have just done nothing, and I would have died.”

            The hunter stared at him, heart racing so loud Derek thought Stiles must surely hear it inside the shop. Then he let out his breath and looked away. “You saved my life first,” he mumbled. “I couldn’t have done nothing.”

            “And now?” Derek asked plainly, not moving. “What’s your excuse for not killing me now?”

            The hunter looked back at him, and then gave a little shake of his head. “Because I’m worried my daughter may have been right,” he said cryptically. “What do you need?”

            “What?” Derek asked, aware the conversation had just taken a sharp turn without him.

            “What do you need?” the hunter said impatiently, motioning toward the shop. “Why were you selling your _teeth_? What could you need that badly?”

            Derek glanced over at the shop door, and then back at the hunter, and then back at the shop, and realized this might head where he’d thought it would after all. “My sister,” he said evenly. “She’s sick. The meds she needs got ruined by angel blood last night, and I don’t have money for more.”

            He could practically smell the guilt rolling off the man as he realized what that meant. Not only had Derek risked his own life to save him, he’d risked the life of his sister, and had turned to selling bits of himself to save her. Guilt was not exactly the intended effect, but it was potentially just as useful in preventing Derek from being killed so he didn’t try to make it sound any better.

            “What… medication?” the hunter asked. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a cell phone. “What’s the name?”

            “It… Lycaphin,” Derek said, caught off guard. “It’s, uh… ceftriaxone for lycanthropes.”

            The hunter looked at him for a moment longer, and Derek wondered if he even knew what that meant. If he did, he didn’t comment, just dialed the phone without breaking eye contact. It rang, loudly enough Derek could hear it.

            “Alan, it’s Chris,” the hunter said when the line picked up. “I need a favor.”

            “You?” Alan said dryly, his voice tinny through the phone. “How unusual. Who’s dying this time?”

            The hunter – Chris, Derek thought – stared at Derek in silence for a moment, and then blew out a breath. “I need a round of Lycaphin delivered to Claudia’s shop.”

            “Lycaphin?” Alan echoed, sounding confused. “I’ve never known an Argent to need information badly enough to save a werewolf.”

            “Are you going to do it or not?” Chris asked impatiently. “I need it as soon as possible. Immediately, if you can get it here.”

            “Sure,” Alan said, in a way that meant _no way_. “I will close my shop in the middle of the day and drive across town to help you-“

            “It’s for a friend,” Chris said loudly, cutting him off.

            Dead silence echoed heavily on the other end, and then: “Pull the other one.”

            “I’m not joking, Alan,” Chris said, voice tight. He dropped his gaze from Derek’s, but that didn’t make it feel any less like a punch to the gut to be called a friend by a hunter. Derek had no idea what was going on, but he had to assume he was about to hear the catch. “Can you do this or not?”

            “I can do it,” Alan said slowly. “But you’re going to pay extra for delivery, and you owe me an explanation when I get there.”

            Chris glanced back at Derek, lips pursed, and then said: “I’ll pay double for delivery, but I’m not going to be here when you get here. Just give the meds to- hey, what’s your name?”

            “Derek,” Derek responded automatically, right back at square one of Confusion, the new and annoying game this hunter was playing.

            “Give the meds to Derek. He’ll be waiting with Claudia’s kid.”

            Another silence filled the other end of the phone, and then Derek heard a soft sound of surrender. “Fine. It’s two-hundred-and-fifty, in cash only. I won’t have your father knocking on my door asking about whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into today.”

            Chris hung up the phone without dignifying that with a response, and pulled his wallet from his pocket. “I’m going to leave the money here with you,” he said, pulling out bills. Actual cash, not Company tokens. “Alan is going to bring your sister’s medication to the shop.”

            “I heard,” Derek said, still wary and more than a little confused. It was absolutely reasonable for someone to want to help another person that had saved their life. The problem was that hunters did not consider supers, _any_ supers, to be another person. “I don’t… _understand_ , but I heard.”

            Pausing, Chris looked at him. “You saved my life,” he said, like that somehow explained his actions now. Like that _mattered_ to hunters. “Letting you die would have been bad manners. Now I’m repaying my debt. Do you not want me to?”

            Derek actually gave a snort of surprised amusement at hearing his own words turned back on him. The answering smile on Chris’ face looked just as surprising to the hunter. “No, I’m _grateful_ ,” Derek answered. “Thank you.”

            That seemed to sober Chris up immediately, and he nodded, handing over the cash. “It’s not a big deal,” he said, although Derek doubted the veracity of the words. “Just don’t… Listen, we’re even now, right?”

            “Sure,” Derek said softly, at a loss for what else to say.

            “Good,” Chris said with an air of finality.

            Then he brushed past Derek, back into the Emissary shop, and the door jingled shut behind him in the most surreal way. Derek stared after him for a second, and then tipped his head back and took a deep breath, just trying to get a grasp on what just happened. He wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t going home to the bed of some strange hunter. He was down the two teeth he’d meant to be down, and they would grow back and he would get the medicine Cora needed – all of it, this time – so at least that was weirdly going according to plan. Sort of.

            Raised voices from inside the shop drew his attention back out of his own head, and he hurried into the building to stop Stiles from escalating anything regrettable. The kid had worried Chris would kill Derek, and then Chris had come back in alone, so the shouted “Where is he then?!” was of little surprise to Derek.

            “I’m right here,” Derek said loudly. Speaking loudly sounded funny with his missing teeth. “It’s okay, Stiles. He’s uh… he’s helping me.”

            Stiles stared blankly at him, and then at Chris, and then back at Derek. “He’s _what_?”

            “Helping me,” Derek repeated as he came to a stop at the counter, next to Chris. “You remember how I told you I saved a hunter last night?”

            “ _This_ one?” Stiles said incredulously. “You saved _this_ hunter? Out of every single one you could have possibly saved, this guy- that was your decision? Really?”

            “I think I’m offended,” Chris said, and Derek didn’t tell him he probably should be. He also didn’t tell Chris his rescue had been by complete accident. Some things were better left unsaid.

            “Yes, this one,” Derek said levelly. “And he decided to help me in return.”

            “Like he helped you with that healing spell, or like actually helping you?” Stiles asked pointedly.

            “What do you mean _actually_ -“ Chris started.

            “I mean he saved your life and you almost killed him, using that _human_ scroll on him!” Stiles burst out angrily. “If he hadn’t needed _so much_ healing-“

            Chris turned to Derek before Stiles had even finished his sentence. “That hurt you?”

            Derek held up both hands in surrender. “I survived it,” he offered, instead of any of the thousand dry remarks he could have made about hunters knowing a damn thing about anything.

            “Barely,” Stiles interjected, sounding put out. Derek wondered what dog he had in this fight, and realized it might have been a scroll Stiles had made, himself.

            “Look,” Derek said, attempting to placate all parties and thinking it should probably be the other way around. “I did what I thought was right, and he did what he thought was right, and everyone survived the encounter except the monster.”

            As soon as the word was out of his mouth, Derek realized he couldn’t take it back. Monster. It was an ugly word, one humans had used to describe his people for so long, the same word supers used to describe the hunters that took their lives and their children’s lives. It was a word that, before all this nonsense, Chris might have used to describe Derek. It was definitely a word Derek would have used to describe Chris.

            But here they were, and Derek had saved Chris’ life despite the risk, and Chris was saving Cora’s life despite history and expectations, and the word monster just didn’t fit that sort of story.

            Stiles looked between them again suspiciously, but Chris spoke before he could find anything else to yell at them about. “Derek is right. So let’s just… keep doing that. What’s right. I’m having Dr. Deaton deliver medication here, for Derek’s sister. Is that okay, Stiles?”

            “Now you’re helping _Cora_?” Stiles started, but shrank at the look Derek gave him. “I mean, yeah. Sure, that’s great.”

            “Good,” Chris said. He leaned over the counter and plucked up the small, plastic bag containing both of Derek’s incisors. “I’ll be taking these with me, and as long as you two don’t repeat this little performance, I won’t tell your mother about any of this. Agreed?”

            The confiscation didn’t surprise Derek at all. There were plenty of rumors told in the dark about an alpha werewolf’s tooth or claw, even separated from the body, turning humans into werewolves by just a prick of the skin. Of course a hunter would want to make sure they didn’t fall into the wrong hands, even if none of those rumors held any truth. Even if Derek wasn’t even an alpha.

            “Seriously?” Stiles said, followed immediately by: “Agreed! I mean… cool. Thanks, man. We won’t do it again.”

            They would absolutely do this again, Derek knew. They would just go somewhere they would not be caught. There was too much money to be made from something so simple and yet difficult to obtain, more than Derek had any hope of obtaining through legally Sponsored work.

            “I’m sure that’s not true,” Chris said, because Stiles wasn’t fooling anyone here. “However, it has been a very long day and I am going home now.”

            He shot a glance to Derek that he quickly dropped, his heartbeat kicking up a step, and then he patted the counter, pocketed the teeth, and left. Derek watched him leave, ignoring the fresh tang of arousal in the air, and looked over at Stiles in question.

            Stiles, however, just shrugged.

 

* * *

 

**Sunday**

            “It wasn’t _my_ dad,” Allison said, turning up her nose a little at the insinuation. Derek shared a look with Stiles, who pursed his lips to keep from laughing.

            Derek had met Allison a little over a year ago, when Lydia brought her over to meet Cora, and the three had become fast friends. Laura hadn’t liked it, the daughter of a hunter in their den, but Allison had since proven herself a friend. He had known that her dad basically kicked her out of the house when he found out about Lydia, but hadn’t connected her to Chris until Stiles pointed it out last night.

            “It was definitely your dad,” Stiles told her. “I recognize your dad.”

            “His name was Chris,” Derek said.

            “Lots of names are Chris,” Allison responded a little hotly. “Maybe it was a shapeshifter or an alien or something. There’s no way _my_ dad walked in here and paid over $200 to help a sick werewolf. I’m sorry, but it didn’t happen.”

            “Maybe he was possessed,” Stiles suggested cheerfully.

            “He wasn’t possessed,” Derek said. “Possession changes the body chemicals humans emit. I’d have smelled it.” He did not mention anything else he might have smelled; he still wasn’t sure what to make of _that_.

            Stiles and Allison both made a face. “You can’t smell a possession,” Allison argued.

            “Gross,” Stiles said. “What does it smell like?”

            “Sulfur and…” Derek shook his head a little, not sure how to describe the scent of a demon in a human body. He’d only met one once. “Sulfur and tin, I guess.”

            Stiles made another face and Allison brushed it off again with a flick of her hand. “Look, if he could kick his own daughter out for seeing a super, even though Lydia’s never hurt anyone… even if you saved his life, I just don’t think he’d turn around and do… all that.”

            Derek considered this for a moment, listening to the truth in Allison’s heart, and she at least believed her words completely. He gave a small shrug, not willing to argue with her. Allison may have been angry with her father still, and it had been wrong of Chris to make her leave, but Derek couldn’t help wondering if Allison’s penchant for befriending supernatural people ran in the family.

            _I’m worried my daughter may have been right._

            “Maybe it was a trick,” Stiles said quietly, and both Derek and Allison looked at him. He shrugged. “Well, think about it. Your dad’s resourceful, right? Derek saved his life. Maybe he saw a way to get some inside info on the supernatural community. Derek’s not exactly scary-“

            “I’m sitting right here,” Derek pointed out. He was plenty scary. Absolutely terrifying, he thought. Ask the three children he rescued, or the Strays he helped or- it was possible he was not as scary as he would like to believe.

            “Exactly!” Stiles said. “You’re sitting right here!” He quieted, meeting Derek’s eyes before dropping his gaze a little. “Maybe he’s just using you.”

            “Maybe,” Derek agreed. But for the first time he had been able to give Cora a full dose of the medication she desperately needed, and they still had money leftover enough to buy food for the next couple of days.

            He looked over, only to find Allison staring at him, her brows scrunched a little in thought, like she was trying to figure him out. “You don’t think so.”

            “I don’t know what I think,” Derek said, and it was even mostly true. Nothing Chris did fit into the hunter mold. But he had overheard Allison crying the night she ran, and he had listened to Lydia ranting to Cora about the father that had been so harsh to his own daughter. Something was going on, Derek just didn’t know _what_. “Nothing about any of this makes sense.”

            “That does,” Allison said acidly. “He’s never made any sense.”

            “You still love him,” Derek said, not sure if it was a question.

            She looked over again and sighed. “Yeah. I just wish he was different.”

            Derek gave her shoulder a gentle pat. “Maybe he wishes he was, too,” he said. “If you think about it, you’re making him choose between loving you and hating us, and I don’t think he wants to choose us. Fathers aren’t supposed to do that.”

            Allison laid her hand over his in thanks, and gave him a watery smile. “Says the guy whose alpha took off to pick fights with hunters,” she pointed out, but it carried no heat.

            Derek rolled his eyes. “Peter’s not my dad,” he said. “Chris _is_ yours. He…” Derek trailed off, realizing what he was about to admit, then pushed ahead anyway. “He told me he was worried you were right. I didn’t know what he meant when he said it, but… it makes sense now. Sounds like he’s trying.”

            She made a noise of irritation. “I really hate you, you know,” she said tiredly. “I just wanted to hate my dad in peace.”

            “No, you didn’t,” Derek said, and clambered to his feet. He had about an hour left before work, and he still had to cross a lot of city to get there. “Let me know what he says, though. Maybe we’ll have to perform an exorcism after all.”

            That, at least, got a laugh from Allison and Stiles both.

           

* * *

 

**Wednesday Evening**

 

            Chris had a plan. He was going to march right into the Burn, straight to Derek’s house, knock on the front door, and apologize like a useful human being. Then he was going to give him peace offerings, and thank him profusely, and if he was still alive after all of that, he was going to find out exactly how much courage he really had, and ask for help.

            The problem, he found, was that Derek did not have a front door so much as an entrance vaguely _resembling_ a doorway, which was where Derek found him stalled out in his plan only a moment or two after he arrived. “Hey,” he said. Smooth.

            “Are you lost?” Derek asked, peering around him to the empty street. He fixed Chris with an inquisitive but wary look. “What are you doing here?”

            “I came to see you,” came out of Chris’ mouth before he could remember his plan. “I mean, I came to apologize,” he rushed. “I didn’t know that scrolls- that _human_ scrolls couldn’t be used on werewolves. I didn’t- I thought I was helping and-“

            “It’s okay,” Derek interrupted, moving out of the building. It wasn’t a house, not the way Chris had expected, more like a burned out shell of an office building. When Stiles had given him the address, after much explaining about _why_ he wanted it, he hadn’t said a word about what to expect upon arrival. “You don’t owe me an apology.”

            “You deserve one,” Chris said, fumbling the two scrolls out of his pocket and presenting them to Derek. “You said that scroll saved you, Stiles said it hurt you. These ones won’t hurt you.”

            Derek looked down at the scrolls resting so innocuously on Chris’ palm, then back up to meet his eyes. Derek had to know what they meant, just the same as Chris did. “What are you doing?” he repeated, softer this time.

            Chris let out a soft breath, and ran a hand through his hair. He had thought all of this through, rehearsed what he was going to say, but standing here looking at Derek, none of it seemed adequate. He had thought he’d lost the one person left that had made life worth living, and Derek had given her back to him. No words in the world could express what that meant.

            “My daughter called me last night,” he said, knowing Derek wouldn’t really understand. “I was pretty sure she’d never do that again, after what I… well, I did something stupid, and she left. But she called me, and she said you spoke to her at the Emissary shop, and told her what happened, and that’s why-“

            “Chris,” Derek said, and a little jolt ran through Chris to hear his name said so softly from a werewolf’s lips.

            “Thank you,” Chris rushed, before Derek could ask him what he was doing here again or, worse, kick him out. “I just- I wanted to say thank you, in person, and I didn’t know how else to contact you, since…” He gestured at their surroundings, hoping it implied the obvious fact that he could not have just called.

            “Allison called you?” he said, just as someone from inside the building called his name. Derek looked over his shoulder and then back at Chris, though he looked a little more panicked now. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, and before Chris could agree, he added a little louder: “It’s Allison’s dad.”

            Chris’ brow furrowed. The way he said it made it sound like the person inside knew who Allison was, too. Something was said back, something too low for Chris to catch, but he could tell it was meant for them by the way Derek gave him a skeptical once over. He backed up a step, instinct warring with intention, and Derek swayed toward him as if connected.

            “Have you eaten?” Derek asked, nodding toward the interior of the building. “My sister wants to know how many plates.”

            Plates. Chris stared blankly for a second, his brain spinning a circle after its own tail at the thought. Plates. He swallowed. Of course some part of him had known supers did things that weren’t killing humans. They got Sponsors to work jobs that paid money, and that money went _somewhere_ , but it had never really been a consideration to him.

            “Chris,” Derek said, and Chris jerked, looking up to meet his pale eyes. Both of Derek’s eyebrows rose expectantly. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

            “Dinner,” Chris echoed vacantly, then snapped back to himself. He couldn’t stay for dinner, not in a den full of werewolves. He felt the wakening of his better senses along with the dawning realization of just where he was and that he had no idea what he was actually doing. “I- I can’t. I’m sorry, I just… oh, right,” he said as he remembered the other reason he had come this far. He dug into his pocket and produced a small roll of cash. “This is for you.”

            Derek’s eyes narrowed, and Chris saw the moment his face closed off. “I don’t want your money.”

            “Well then it’s a good thing this is your money,” Chris shot back, shaking the roll as if to emphasize the point, needing Derek to take the money before he could leave. If he didn’t, it would just be Chris profiting off the teeth of another wolf, and he didn’t think Allison would like that much at all. Especially not since she knew this particular one. “I sold your teeth. I figured you were cutting the profit with Stiles, so I took them to sell instead. The whole amount’s here.”

            The truth was, he still had no idea why he’d done it. At the time he had kind of figured he would sell them and make sure Claudia got the money to Derek somehow, but he could just as easily have kept the money for himself. He could have thrown them away, for all that it mattered. Derek’s confused expression told Chris he thought the same thing.

            Derek’s gaze lingered on him for another long second before he turned to look over his shoulder again. Chris’ attention shifted and he realized someone was coming, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to escape if he needed to. He lunged forward and grabbed one of Derek’s hands, startled by how warm and soft his skin was. Derek jerked a little at the contact, attention snapping back to Chris, but although he could have pulled away easily, he let Chris have his hand.

            “Just take it,” Chris told him, pressing the roll against his palm. Derek’s fingers closed on the money automatically, his eyes never leaving Chris’. “Thank you for the offer.”

            “Derek, are you okay?” came a soft, pleasant voice from behind Derek.

            Chris took a swift step backward, palm buzzing with the feel of Derek’s skin on his. He didn’t look too closely at what that meant, because another wolf came into view then, this one female, and Chris’ heart sank. Derek had a mate. He shoved aside the disappointment clutching at his gut to examine later and gave Derek a curt nod. This was just business, he reminded himself. An apology and a thank you, that was the plan, and he’d done it. Time to go.

            _Really_ time to go, he thought as the new wolf bared her teeth at him, golden eyes flashing. “You!” she snarled, blocked from attacking him by the bulk of Derek’s body in the doorway.

            “It’s okay!” Derek said quickly, turning to face her, putting up his hands, obviously surprised that she recognized Chris. “I told you, this is Allison’ dad.”

            “This is an _Argent_ ,” the other wolf snapped, never taking her eyes from Chris. She snapped her jaws, and Chris planted his feet for a fight, but Derek stood steady between them. Protecting him. “ _Chris_ Argent, heir apparent to the _Company_.”

            Chris saw the stiffening of Derek’s shoulders, and it occurred to him that Derek hadn’t known. He hadn’t recognized him at all, and for the first time in Chris’ life, he felt bad about who he was and where he’d come from. He took another step backward, and the motion drew Derek’s attention to him.

            He met Derek’s eyes, and couldn’t deny the confusion and betrayal there. He tamped down on his guilt; they weren’t friends. Chris had never lied about who he was. Still… it didn’t feel nice, to think that Derek might have behaved differently, if he’d known. That Derek might have done the same as his mate, baring his teeth and starting a fight.

            “I should go,” he said hollowly. Derek didn’t protest or try to stop him, and Chris didn’t expect him to.

            But the fact that Chris _wanted_ him to followed him uncomfortably all the way back to his car at the edge of the Burn.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 

**Thursday Afternoon**

 

            It was foolish, and Chris knew it. If he had any sense at all, he would have let it be the night Derek’s mate had turned up to chase him off and Chris had let her. There was no reason for him to ever see Derek again; he had apologized, he had made reparations completely unbecoming of a hunter, he had thanked him for sparking contact with Allison again, and he had ensured that little shit down at the Emissary shop didn’t exploit Derek for parts of his body. Derek had his own life, and Chris…

            Chris had come home and laid in his empty bed in his empty apartment with his cell phone on his chest, waiting for a call that never came from the daughter he had messed up caring for. He had spent the rest of the night with the ghost sensation of his hand on Derek’s overwarm skin and the memory of his scent from being close enough to touch. He had spent the night arguing with himself about his life choices instead of sleeping, and then, instead of dragging is exhausted carcass to work in the morning, he had called in sick to think some more.

            So when the call came from Allison around 2pm, he was actually home, if not entirely ready to answer.

            “Did you go to Derek’s _house_?” she asked as soon as he’d said hello.

            “I went to Derek’s _residence_ ,” he corrected. “I told you-“

            “You told me you were going to apologize to him for the scroll,” she interrupted. “I thought you meant at the store! Dad, you can’t just waltz into the Burn! You can’t just go to Derek’s house and-“

            “Woah, hey,” he said, attempting to placate her, wholly unsure what exactly she was so angry about. “All I did was apologize. I thought you’d be happy about that.”

            “Well I’m not!” she cried, and then he could hear her taking a breath to calm down. She sighed. “Derek’s younger sister is one of Lydia’s friends. She’s really sick and we’ve been spending Thursday nights in with her. But _apparently_ Laura didn’t know I was an Argent, and then you went over there, and now I’m not allowed back. So, thanks for that.”

            “So now you’re friends with werewolves, too?” he asked, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew they were the wrong ones. “That’s not-“

            “Don’t,” Allison told him with a disgusted noise. “ _God_ , I thought maybe you could change. My mistake.”

            The tone of the phone going dead in his hand was deafening, and he pulled it away from his ear to see the _call ended_ dialogue blinking at him. He sighed, staring until the screen went black and then resisted the urge to throw it across the room. After another minute of sitting, he snatched up his jacket and his keys, and headed out the door.

 

* * *

 

**Thursday Afternoon**

 

            The Emissary shop was almost empty when he reached it, with Claudia behind the counter instead of Stiles. He growled in frustration- it figured that the _one_ time he needed the kid, he was absent. He couldn’t exactly ask Claudia where her son was, not without raising red flags and having to explain himself. However, if he had any chance of fixing things with Allison, it looked as if he was going to have to make some sacrifices and fix what he’d broken first.

            “Chris,” Claudia greeted when he approached the counter. “Back so soon?”

            Of course Stiles would have told her he’d been in. He smiled as warmly as he could. “I am,” he agreed. “Though, less for product and more for advice.”

            “Advice?” she echoed with a sly grin. “You?”

            “I messed up with someone,” he said, instead of taking her bait.

            Claudia nodded. “Your daughter. I heard about that.”

            “No, I- well, yes, her as well, but this is… someone else,” he said, then swallowed his pride. “A werewolf. Your son is friends with him, I believe.”

            Her eyes narrowed. “Chris Argent, I told you not to bring your fights with the supers into my shop. I won’t have you hunting-“

            “I’m not hunting him,” Chris rushed to assure her. “He saved my life, and I tried to thank him, but there was a lot I just… didn’t know.”

            She eyed him for another long moment, and then relaxed a little. “I’ve known you for nearly ten years now, and I’ve never once heard you admit you didn’t know something, or that you were wrong.”

            He swallowed, and couldn’t meet her eyes.

            _Werewolves aren’t like that._

            “I didn’t think I was,” he admitted, trying not to sound too petulant about it. No part of his upbringing had prepared him for a daughter that went totally perpendicular to everything he knew. Until Derek had nearly lost his life to save Chris’, he had never had to wonder if supernatural creatures were people too. In just a few days he had glimpsed a different side of the world, the side his daughter had found first, and their continued relationship depended upon him trying to understand it.

            “Okay,” she said, with an air of finality. “I’ll help you. Who’s the wolf?”

            “His name is Derek,” Chris said, and promptly realized he had no idea what Derek’s last name was. He was pretty sure that werewolves _had_ last names. “Um… he has a younger sister that’s ill. And a mate. I think her name is Laura,” he added, scraping at his memory for what Allison had said.

            Claudia thought for a moment, and then shook her head. “You should walk away from this one, Chris,” she said quietly, and Chris’ stomach sank. She obviously knew something, and it didn’t sound good.

            “Why?” he asked, a little afraid to hear the answer. On the one hand, being right about supers being monsters would make the world make sense again. On the other hand, he doubted Allison would listen to him.

            “Because it sounds like you’re talking about the Hale family,” she said quietly, meeting his eyes. “Derek and his sisters, Laura and Cora,” she added slowly. Chris had to ignore the little leap in his gut. It must have been Derek’s other sister he met. “And their alpha, Peter Hale.”

            Chris’ heart twisted in his chest, hard. He recognized that name. It had been burned into him by his father. Peter Hale. The monster alpha who had bitten Chris’ younger brother during the Burn War. Of every werewolf in the entire city, _that_ one was the one Chris had trained the hardest to kill. Peter Hale’s name was on every hunter’s kill list, no exceptions. He was at the very top of Chris’ list.

            “But he’s been gone a while,” Claudia said very purposefully, drawing Chris’ attention back to her. “Their alpha. They’ve been on their own since he disappeared. But I know you, I know how hunters like to hold grudges. What their uncle did to Keith, that’s on him, not those kids. I don’t want you hurting them for what isn’t their fault.”

            Chris swallowed whatever retort he had to that, and stood a little straighter. “I don’t want to hurt them, Claudia,” he said quietly. “I want to help them. Derek’s sister is… she’s one of Allison’s friends, and the other sister, Laura, she won’t let Allison back now because she found out about-“ He hesitated, realizing the implication of what he was about to say. His surname had never been anything but a source of pride. “Me.”

            Claudia’s laugh was loud in the quiet shop, and Chris jumped a little at the suddenness of it. “I’ll bet that’s a new one for you,” she commented. She shook her head and gave him a scrutinous look, and then spread her palms on the counter and got to her feet. “Okay, so if you really want to help those folks, here’s what you do.”

 

* * *

 

**Friday Evening**

 

            Chris parked at the edge of the Burn and took the twenty minute walk through the razed scar of his city to get to Derek’s place. The streets were quiet, maybe even quieter than the human streets on a Friday night, yet Chris couldn’t help the creeping feeling that he was being watched. He stepped a little faster, even though he knew most things out here could outrun him with ease. He had chosen to make sure his message rang true, and was unarmed except for the pocketknife in his jeans.

            Derek was waiting for him at the front entrance when he arrived, giving credence to Chris’ suspicions about being observed. He grasped the package in his hand a little tighter and shifted uncomfortably, not sure how to start. Derek saved him from having to.

            “You shouldn’t be here,” Derek said. It wasn’t a threat; it didn’t even sound angry.

            “I know,” Chris said, “but I am.” He fiddled with the package in his hands, not ready to give it to Derek just yet. “I’m sorry for causing a problem before,” he continued. “And it might cause a problem now, but I came to ask that you don’t punish Allison because of me.”

            “We aren’t in the habit of inviting hunters into our homes,” Derek said.

            “You invited me,” Chris replied.

            “That was before I knew your last name,” Derek told him, not moving from where he leaned so casually against the door frame. “Your family hasn’t just been killing my people, they’ve been leading the hunt.”

            “Your uncle killed my little brother,” Chris said, as levelly as he could. “But I’m still here apologizing to you, because I know the crimes of one person shouldn’t be blamed on another. Allison hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s never hurt anyone.”

            Derek considered this, watching Chris with pale, human eyes. Finally, he dropped his gaze and sighed. “I’ll talk to Laura about it.”

            “Thank you,” Chris said, relief washing through his system. He could at least tell Allison he tried, now, and that might be enough for her to start talking to him again. That was, unfortunately, the easy part of the night. “I uh… I also came to see you.”

            “Why?” Derek said, confusion wrinkling his brow just a little.

            Although Chris opened his mouth, nothing came out. He couldn’t count how many circles his mind had spun in over the last few days. He didn’t know how to explain to Derek that he couldn’t stop thinking about him, his voice, his eyes, his hands. He certainly didn’t have words to describe what he felt about having watched the raw power in the surly wolf used _for_ him instead of turned _against_ him.

            “I wanted to,” he said at last, and then winced at how blunt that sounded. Quickly, he held out the wrapped package, aware of the way Derek stiffened as if prepared for an attack. The part of Chris that should have relished that reaction from a werewolf only felt guilt. He withdrew the offer and unwrapped it slowly, pulling out the book he had brought so he could show Derek it was a gift, not a weapon. “It’s for you.”

            “A book?” Derek asked, not relaxing at all.

            Chris looked at the novel in his hands, and then back up to Derek. “Claudia said you… would like it,” he said, feeling silly now. Claudia was exactly the sort of person to let him bring a book as a gift to someone that couldn’t read, just to make a point about his own ignorance. “It’s fine if you don’t-“

            “I would,” Derek said quickly, taking a step forward and then halting. “That _is_ one I’ve wanted. You asked Claudia?”

            “It beat asking Stiles,” Chris said, again holding out the book to Derek. He wasn’t about to admit that he’d gone to talk to Stiles and only happened to find Claudia instead.

            “Why are you doing this?” Derek said, close enough now to take the book, but keeping his hands to himself. “You don’t owe me anything.”

            “I know,” Chris said. He blew out a breath and let his hand drop to his side, still clutching the book. It seemed Derek wasn’t going to let him coast through this. “Maybe you already know this, but Allison left me. She told me she was seeing a banshee, and I-“ He hesitated, dropping his gaze as guilt flushed under his skin. “I had a bad reaction, and it cost me the most important part of my entire life. And I thought I was right, anyway, until… you.”

            “Chris,” Derek said softly, and Chris looked up to meet his eyes. “It’s not my job to fix your relationship with your daughter.”

            “I know!” Chris agreed quickly. “That’s not- I’m not here to-“ He cut himself off with a soft curse, and rubbed a hand over his face. “I did come here to apologize for Allison’s sake, but I’m also here because I want to learn something. I was… wrong about you, and I don’t want to keep being wrong. And you’re right, it’s _not_ your job to fix that but-“ He stopped, just staring back at Derek, not sure where he was going with any of this, and suddenly very sure that he should just go home. “Sorry, I-“

            “Okay,” Derek said, stepping closer. Too close, close enough that Chris tensed when he leaned toward him, but Derek only wrapped fingers around the spine of the book and slipped it from Chris’ slack hand. “Stay.”

            Chris watched him disappear, heart racing at how close he had just come to a werewolf without any aggression. He let out a shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair, rubbing at the back of his neck. A moment later Derek reappeared, sans book, and carrying two big, heavy backpacks. He handed one to Chris as he brushed past without a word, and Chris wheeled to watch him walking away.

            “Where are you going?” Chris called after him.

            “Come find out,” Derek said over his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

**Friday Evening**

 

            Where they were going, it turned out, was deeper into the Burn than Chris had been since the battle had scarred the city in the first place. Derek led him past the blackened skeletons of building after building after building. Supers peered out of some of them, perched on window ledges in windows devoid of glass, watched over them from gaping, ruined doorways. Although Chris’ senses were on high alert, none of them made a move to approach the duo. None of them attacked.

            A quarter mile into the Burn, Derek finally turned down a side street and came to a stop. Chris stopped close to him, casting a cautious look around for why they had stopped here, on a deserted road. Derek looked over at him, and then slipped the pack off his shoulder, set it on the ground, and raised his jaws to give a long, low howl that raised the hairs on the back of Chris’ neck.

            “What are you doing?” Chris hissed, moving just a little closer at the scuff of a foot on pavement. The sound bounced off the buildings in a way that made it impossible to locate the origin.

            Derek glanced over, and then knelt to unzip the pack. He pulled several small, tattered brown bags from within, and that was when Chris saw the first child inching out of the shadows toward them. It stood not-quite two feet tall, with green skin and long ears and small tusks that just barely protruded over its upper lip. A goblin. Chris swallowed and looked at Derek again, but Derek’s attention was focused solely on the child.

            “It’s okay,” Derek said softly, voice low and warm and smooth. The goblin looked uncertainly at Chris, and then back to Derek. “He’s a friend. He won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t bring someone here that would hurt you, Isabelle.”

            The goblin – Isabelle – shot Chris another furtive look, but whatever Derek had for her was apparently more important than her fear. She crept over and held out an empty paper bag to Derek, exchanging it for the full one before skittering backward out of reach. She didn’t wait to get back into the building, just opened the bag in the street and pulled out what looked like some kind of biscuit, which she shoved into her mouth whole.

            A moment later, they were surrounded by a small group of goblin children, all of them exchanging their worn, empty bags for Derek’s full ones, until he ran out of them on the last child. It touched a little, three-fingered hand to Derek’s forehead, and Derek copied the motion back before standing up and shouldering the pack again. He waved to the children, bidding them goodbye, and then glanced at Chris.

            “They don’t have anyone else,” Derek said quietly, and moved past Chris, back to the main street. “The rest of their Clan was killed in an extermination attempt a few weeks ago. By your company.”

            Chris had killed dozens of supers, maybe hundreds, maybe a thousand, since his father had first trained him, but this was the first time he felt the sharp lance of guilt in his gut about it. This was the first time he felt real _shame_ over his job, over his family’s business, over their actions. He remembered seeing that extermination on the Company schedule. He remembered hearing the hunters who’d been assigned to it laugh about it afterward. Pests, they had called them. Vermin.

            Derek was feeding them, because they were children, and they had no one else.

            “I wasn’t there,” he said quietly.

            “I didn’t say you were,” Derek responded simply.

            Chris kept pace beside him as they walked down the street in silence. Chris didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if anything he could say would make a difference in what Derek thought of him. He didn’t know why it _mattered_ to him what Derek thought of him, but it did. It mattered. And worse, Chris was beginning to suspect it mattered for reasons that went beyond Allison’s good graces.

            Half a block later, an eerie wail split the air, echoing down from the rooftops, and Chris threw himself to one side, against the nearest building. Cackling erupted in the wake of the angel’s call, and Chris swung his focus up to the rooftop across the street, to the line of gargoyles perched on the edge. Their stubby maws were open as they gibbered excitedly, silenced a second later by another wail. Chris craned his neck as far as he could, to the roof of the building he stood against, and there it was.

            Seraph, his mind supplied frantically. They almost never came close to the edge of the Burn, and Chris had never seen one in real life. This one was massive, sitting with its claws peeking over the edge of the roof. He could see its middle set of wings mantled high over it, slender and sharp, the other two pairs hanging loosely in preparation for flight. It leered down at him, dark patches where its eyes should have gone and wide mouth full of needle teeth.

            “Play nice, Charlie,” Derek called upward, and the angel’s attention shifted infinitesimally to Derek instead. “He’s a friend.”

            Chris clapped his palms over his ears at the deafening tone that emanated from the angel in response. It ended quickly, and the gargoyles picked up shrieking excitedly as soon as they would be heard. Derek just shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard the ear-splitting sound at all.

            “I know who he is,” he answered loudly. “Did I stutter?”

            The tone sounded again, louder this time, and the angel leaned over the edge, craning its long neck down to look at Chris with those big, dark patches. Chris stared back, muscles frozen. He had no weapons, no way to defend himself if the seraph decided to launch an attack. Chris would be dead in seconds.

            From the middle of the street, out in the open, Derek snapped his fingers a few times, and the angel’s attention shifted back to him. “That won’t change anything,” he said, staring right back at the angel. “It hasn’t changed anything in a decade. Leave him be. He belongs to me, tonight.”

            An unworldly wail split the air again, and the angel receded a little, enough that it no longer looked as though it would spill over the edge of the building and drop down upon Chris. He didn’t relax, regardless, because he knew how fast angels were reported to move. Instead, he took a shallow, shaky breath and let it out slowly, then called up: “Thank you.”

            The angel’s wings flared high and began to glow as the tone sounded out three times, short and sharp. Chris winced, finally looking away to turn to Derek, who gave him a small half-smile and beckoned him onward with a nod.

            “So, I belong to you, now?” Chris asked under his breath as he hurried to get to Derek’s side, trying to keep his tone light to cover up his shaking.

            Derek glanced askew at him, smile lingering at the corner of his lips. “Would you rather belong to Charlie? He does have pretty fetching wings,” he said, then sobered. “I _am_ sorry if it was out of line, but it was safer to claim you than to try to argue. My sister isn’t the only one who recognizes you, and it seems you’re not very popular around here.”

            “But you are,” Chris said. “They like you, or respect you. Claiming me wouldn’t have worked if they didn’t.”

            “Because I do what I can to help people,” Derek said back. “Maybe you could try it sometime. You might like it.”

            Chris made a noise of protest, but arguing it would have been an exercise in futility. Derek was right. Chris may have spent time killing supers in the name of helping humans, but it hadn’t, not really. Even though Chris hadn’t heard what the angel had said directly, he got the idea, and Derek was right about that, too. Ten years of fighting and killing supers hadn’t improved life for humans. It had just made him a killer.

            “I’m trying now,” Chris said instead.

            Derek made a noncommittal noise and kept walking. Chris kept his attention on the top of the buildings, watching as the gargoyles followed them, flitting from rooftop to rooftop. Derek didn’t seem particularly concerned about it, but Derek also wasn’t a highly disliked human hunter. So Chris watched them watching him until all at once they scattered like startled birds, and Chris almost bumped into Derek where he had come to a stop.

            “What’s wrong?” Chris said, senses on high alert even though he would be next to useless in a fight with something that could take a flock of gargoyles and a werewolf.

            “Nothing,” Derek said, looking over his shoulder at Chris. “You can unclench. We’re here.”

            Chris turned to look at the remnants of a tall office building towering over them. The entrance was mostly intact, but the floors near the roof looked as if a bomb had gone off. It probably had. He could not imagine the structure was still stable after so much time, and he said as much to Derek.

            “It’ll hold,” Derek assured him. “We’re going to the top, and unfortunately, the elevators no longer work. Still want to come with me?”

            Looking up, up, up, Chris squinted at the burned out top of the building so far above them. “Yeah,” he said. “How hard could it be?”

            Derek huffed and it was almost a laugh, and a little thrill of pride rushed through Chris at having caused it. “I’d race you,” Derek said as he moved for the entrance, “but I’d win.”

            Chris scoffed at the jab, and Derek really did laugh, then. It sounded good on him, Chris thought, feeling heat in his cheeks at the thought. This – the way he felt about the werewolf – was rapidly becoming a problem.

 

* * *

 

**Friday Evening**

 

            The stairs up were unlit, echoing deeply with every footstep no matter how quiet Chris tried to be. They went up and up and up, for what felt like forever. Chris had not climbed so many stairs at once in his life, much less while carrying a pack as heavy as the one Derek had handed him when they set out. By the time Derek stopped, short of the actual top floor, Chris’ legs were burning and his chest had that peculiar rasp that came with sprinting longer than he was used to. He did his very best to pretend it didn’t faze him at all, even though he was sure the wolf could hear his heart hammering.

            Derek put his hand on the doorknob and then hesitated, looking back at Chris thoughtfully. “What?” Chris asked.

            “I’ve shown you a lot tonight,” Derek said quietly. “Some of it, I probably shouldn’t have. Regardless of… well, you’re a hunter. You could hurt a lot of people, and I-”

            “I won’t,” Chris interrupted quickly.  When Derek just kept looking at him, Chris shook his head a little and dropped his gaze. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m quickly becoming not-proud of,” he added. “I don’t want… _this_ to be one of them.”

            That seemed to be good enough for Derek, because he opened the door without further argument. The room beyond was dark, the only light coming from the broken walls that lead to the sky beyond. The sun was setting in the distance, layering red and orange highlights over the shapes in the wreckage of the top two floors of the building. Something had smashed out the ceiling, turning it into one giant cave.

            Something that was still there, something which shifted in the darkness as they set foot in the room. The sound of scales scraping on cement filled the air, and Chris realized what exactly Derek had brought him to see a moment before glowing, red eyes opened, slit pupils widening to see in the dark.

            Dragon.

            Chris froze, staring wide-eyed as she uncoiled, the fire of sunset spilling over her scales, flaring up the crested horns on her head and down the spikes decorating her ridged spine. A low, dangerous hiss began a beat before Derek held up his hands in a placating gesture.

            “Woah, woah, easy Vera,” he soothed, putting himself between her face and Chris. “He’s a friend. You know I wouldn’t have brought anyone that would hurt you.”

            She hesitated, scaled lips pulled back from razor teeth, but at another soft sound from Derek, she relented, muscles relaxing. A small, worried noise escaped her, and then she was snuffling around Derek’s person like a curious puppy. Derek laughed, his fingers shifting into claws as he scrubbed around her face, scritching at her eye ridges and along her jaw and around her nostrils. She leaned into the touches, oblivious to the sharpness of his claws. They didn’t even leave scuff marks.

            After a minute of attention, Derek finally pressed his palms to her snout and shoved her gently away from him. He glanced over to Chris before slipping his pack off his shoulder, and Chris hurried to follow the unspoken command. However, when he went to pass it back to Derek, Derek just shook his head.

            “Open it,” he said instead.

            Carefully, Chris set the pack on the ground and knelt to open it. While climbing the stairs, it had felt heavy enough to be full of rocks. What he found instead was close enough; it was full of huge, meaty chunks of fresh bone, sealed in plastic. Realization dawned as he looked back up at Derek.

            “You’re feeding her,” he hissed.

            “Yeah,” Derek confirmed as he unzipped his own pack without even setting it down. He pulled out a large package wrapped in clean, white butcher paper, obviously a very large chunk of meat. The dragon watched them both patiently as Derek began to unwrap her dinner. “Her mate would be doing it, but hunters killed him almost two weeks ago.” He paused, and turned to look at Chris again. “Actually, you met what was left of him the night we met. His name was Teibris.”

            Chris blanched. He hadn’t forgotten the amalgamation and he didn’t want to talk about it. “Can’t she hunt for herself?”

            “Not while she’s brooding,” Derek said carefully.

            Eyes snapping back to the dragon waiting so calmly to be fed, Chris realized exactly what sort of situation they were in. A male dragon was dangerous enough on its own, and the females doubly so. A _broody_ female dragon was a force of nature. They weren’t something hunters hunted; they were something hunters marked off as too dangerous, and then kept civilians from getting too close to the nest. Anything else was a death wish.

            And yet they were sitting smack in the middle of a broody dragon’s nest, and the werewolf that had saved his life was hand feeding her meat that Chris had helped him carry out to her.

            With every bit of dignity available to him, Chris plopped down onto his butt and let the world spin for a second. He had taken one small step forward in his understanding, or what he had thought was a small step, and landed on the other side of the world. This made exactly zero sense. Werewolves, maybe, could be treated as humans, but dragons just were not like this. They were wild. They were feral.

            This one was delicately taking chunks of meat from Derek’s hands, swallowing them whole and licking Derek’s fingers clean with a thin, graceful tongue.

            “I wouldn’t have been able to bring her enough,” Derek said quietly as he fed her another piece. Her tongue curled over his digits as she cleaned up. “But since you gave me the entire amount for my teeth, and I didn’t have to use any of it for medication… she’s getting a good meal for once.”

            The dragon – Vera – stopped licking and turned her attention to Derek’s face, and then to Chris. The red of her eyes glowed in the dark of the room and for just a moment, Chris felt like he might be swallowed up right into them. He could feel the press of her mind against his, the heavy, terrifying weight of it more than capable of snuffing him out without her even resorting to dirtying her paws. Ridgebacks, the big, eastern ones, had a neural net for stunning and even killing prey, and Chris would be only a few big bites…

            _Thank you_.

            He blinked at the soft click in his mind and the way the mental weight shifted from crushing to comfortable between one heartbeat and the next. Some part of him had been aware, on some level, that dragons were intelligent, but that had never had any meaning for him. It hadn’t made them any less monstrous.

            Now she lay before him, speaking to him, touching his mind as easily as humans shake hands, and he couldn’t help but know to his very core that whatever put humans above animals, she had it tenfold on him. He became acutely aware that in that moment he was but a trembling rabbit the fox had decided to spare.

            Dimly, he felt a low tremble in the air, and realized she was _thrumming_. It was a sound and a feeling and a soothing mental balm all at once, assuaging all of his senses. He had never heard a dragon do it in real life; they were never relaxed enough to do it around hunters. He swallowed thickly and met her gaze.

            “You’re welcome,” he said aloud, voice thin. “It was the right thing to do.”

            _A custom unfamiliar to your kind._

            He grimaced. He couldn’t argue; they had killed her mate, sentencing her and whatever eggs she currently brooded to a slow death. Only Derek’s good grace had spared her, much the same way he had saved Chris.

            _I will not hurt you_. _Come._

            He swallowed again and struggled to his feet, picking up the heavy backpack as he went. After crossing the few steps between them, glancing to Derek on the way, he set the pack down in front of Vera. She watched as he unwrapped the first large chunk of bone, and when he held it gingerly out to her, she took it gently. The slide of her forked tongue was drier than Chris had expected, and rougher, almost like human skin.

            As Derek had done, Chris pulled each hunk of bone from the sack and unwrapped them for her until nothing remained. Vera licked his fingers one last time, and then her lips, and then pushed her snout into his hand so that his palm slid along her lower jaw. He curled his fingers and scratched the way Derek had, along the seams of her face, over the scales he had no hope of penetrating. Through it all, she thrummed quietly, the sound reverberating down to his bones, down to his soul. He had never heard or felt anything like it.

            “I could get you more,” he murmured, palm skating over her cheek. “If you had a few shed scales…”

            _Dragon scales do not belong in the hands of humans._

            Chris hesitated, and looked to Derek, but the wolf was no help at all, simply staring back and letting Chris dig his own grave if he wanted. “No, they don’t,” Chris replied slowly. “But I could bring them to someone that wouldn’t use them for human things.”

            _An Emissary_.

            “No,” Chris said, and saw the surprised rise of Derek’s brows beside him. While Emissaries _were_ the only ones legally allowed to sell anything to humans and supers under the same roof, they weren’t the only ones that did. “I know a druid that makes things for supers under the table. Medicines, mostly. He’s the one I sold your canines to, Derek, and the one who brought your sister’s medicine.”

            The dragon’s attention shifted to Derek, and Chris wondered what she would say to him. He wondered if Derek could answer back, without words. “He tells the truth,” Derek said. “He arranged for medicine for my sister.”

            “If I specify that your scales are only to be used to help supers, he’ll do it,” Chris added.

            She studied him for long, breathless seconds, and then slowly raised up, up, up, until her horns brushed the ceiling two stories above them. Chris caught a glimpse of the eggs she guarded, each as big as a beach ball and pale, shimmery blue in color before the scrape of claw on scale yanked his attention up. A few glittering scales dropped to the cement, tinkling like glass as they struck.

            _Then take them_ , she advised, _but betray me, and I will know it. And I will not always have the tether of a nest._

            Chris nodded and when she said nothing else nor made a move to do anything else, he bent to scoop up the scales. Five of them in total, each worth more than enough to feed her for days. The Company had intended to harvest the scales from her mate, but the body had gone missing shortly after the hunters had cleared the area for cleanup. They might have gotten to the remains of the amalgamation, but by the time Chris sent them, it had gone missing as well.

            “Thank you,” he said quietly, pocketing the scales. “For trusting me.”

            _I don’t,_ she said, settling back down and tightening her coils around her clutch. _But the wolf does, and I trust him._

            Glancing over at Derek, Chris gave a little smile. “Me, too.”

            A thick, cloying kind of warmth spread through him at the words, and he realized she was laughing at him. _You are different than your kin,_ she told him as the feeling eased. _Perhaps there is hope for you, yet._

            Her eyes closed, leaving them in total darkness until Derek clicked on a small flashlight. “Come on,” he whispered. “She’ll sleep off this meal until tomorrow.”

            Together, they hurried from the cavern and back into the stairwell. It felt like ages ago. It felt like stepping into another world. It felt like a loss, when Derek closed the door on the tranquility of Vera’s thrum. Derek slipped the pack out of Chris’ numb fingers and stuffed it inside of his own to carry, and then looked expectantly at Chris.

            “Are you going to be okay?” he asked softly.

            Chris looked over, bones and heart aching with the loss of that strange, otherworldly sense-sound. “Yeah,” he said. He might not believe any of that just happened if he couldn’t feel the weight of the scales in his pocket. “We just fed a dragon.”

            Derek smiled, and Chris smiled back automatically. “We did,” Derek agreed, almost patronizing, but much too fond. “Will you really be able to trade those scales to your druid friend?”

            “Everyone’s short on them right now,” Chris said. “That’s why the Company went after her mate in the first place, but whoever is putting together those amalgamations got to the body first.”

            Derek looked away, suddenly solemn. “You could make a lot of money if you told them where Vera is.”

            Chris reached out, then, and laid a hand on Derek’s arm until Derek looked up at him. Their eyes met, and Chris shook his head. “I won’t,” he said clearly, firmly. “I’m going to help you feed her, if that’s okay. Deaton will take these scales off my hands, and even at a discount it’ll be enough to feed her for a while. He’ll use them to help other supers, like he helped your sister. I promise.”

            Derek nodded but didn’t look any happier at the words. “Yeah,” he said, but it didn’t sound like an agreement.

            “What’s wrong?” Chris asked, not removing his hand. He could feel the heat of Derek’s body through the jacket.

            “It’s nothing,” Derek said quickly, but even in the near dark Chris could tell that he forced his smile. Chris gave him a pointed look, and Derek rolled his eyes. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then said: “She’s not getting better. My sister. I don’t think it’s the meds, though,” he assured Chris. “I just think… well. If our alpha, my uncle, came back, he might know how to save her, but I don’t think he will.”

            Chris’ heart twisted. He had lost family before, too. “I’m sorry,” he said, even though he knew that was not nearly enough. A wolf pack without an alpha, or one whose alpha had left, rarely survived in this world.

            “It’s not your fault,” Derek said, forcing another smile. “You did… more than you had to. I appreciate it. We should get back.”

            When Derek moved forward Chris let him, fingers slipping off his arm. It felt much the same way being cut off from Vera’s thrum had felt; barren and lacking. He rubbed his hand ineffectually on the side of his jeans, and followed after him.

 

* * *

 

**Friday Evening**

 

            The walk back to the edge of the Burn felt much shorter than the walk out to it had been. Certainly less tense and more mystifying; Derek could practically hear Chris realigning his world with his newfound knowledge. It was more than he had expected to happen, even if his actions tonight only ever affected Chris. On one hand, he wanted to say something, to ask if Chris was alright, maybe ask what exactly was on his mind. On the other hand, there was probably a _lot_ on his mind, and it might not be a good idea to interrupt.

            Derek had never been very good at people, so he interrupted anyway.

            “Are you going to tell Allison about tonight?” he asked softly.

            Chris glanced over then looked up to the sky as he walked, as if maybe there were answers there. “Probably,” he said, then: “If that’s okay.”

            “She already knows about Vera,” Derek said, ignoring the slight stiffening of Chris’ shoulders. “Why is it so bad?”

            “That she knows about Vera?” Chris asked, sounding confused.

            “I mean- that’s not what I mean,” Derek corrected. “When Allison visited the first time, she told us that she had just moved in with Lydia. She said that her dad didn’t like that she was seeing a banshee. I thought, you know, that most humans don’t really like supers much, and obviously you’re a hunter so that’s…”

            “Worse?” Chris suggested.

            Derek winced, but he couldn’t argue. A week ago he’d thought the fewer living hunters, the better. “You’ve met some of us now. You helped my family. You hand fed a dragon. You carried dinner to a goblin clan. You walked away alive from a clamor of gargoyles and a harbinger seraph. Why is it so bad, if your daughter is dating a banshee?”

            He could hear Chris’ heartbeat racheting upward with every word, so Derek stopped long enough to let him breathe. After a bit, Chris blew out a breath. “I want to protect her,” he said quietly.

            “And you think Lydia would hurt her?” Derek asked. “Have you met her?”

            “No,” Chris admitted. “And I don’t think I will get to. Allison’s barely talking to me at all.”

            Derek hummed agreement. “You should tell her about today,” he suggested softly. “And that you’d like to meet Lydia. It would go a long way, I think, even if she doesn’t want you to meet her.”

            “You think so?” Chris asked, looking over again. He had his hands in his jacket pockets still, but he straightened a little at the prospect.

            Again, Derek hummed instead of really answering. “She’s pretty great, you know,” he offered up after a few more paces. “Lydia, I mean. She’s incredibly smart. Given half a chance by humans, she could do a lot of good in the world.”

            “Half a chance,” Chris echoed.

            Derek smiled. “That’s what I gave you.”

            Chris laughed, a particularly pleasant sound, and Derek couldn’t help but laugh a little, too. “You did,” Chris agreed, voice warm. “More than half, I think. I want you to know I appreciate it and… that I’d like another chance.”

            They were nearing the edge of the Burn now, He had elected to keep Chris away from his home; Laura was still a little sore about the whole issue, and he found that he wanted the night to end on a good note. Perhaps not the most logical hope, he knew, but hearts were funny like that. They wanted what they wanted, regardless of any logic, and his wanted to get to know this hunter better.

            And it would seem, he dared to hope, that Chris wanted to know him, too.

            “A chance for what?” he asked quietly.

            “To see you,” Chris replied, trailing to a stop. Derek stopped after another two steps and turned back to look at him. “I would like to see you again, but not- not for this. I mean, not to visit other people, not because of Allison. Just to… see you.”

            Derek liked the flush on Chris’ cheeks. “I’m off work tomorrow,” he said. “I have to stop by Claudia’s shop in the morning. Maybe you could meet me there when it opens?”

            Chris relaxed a little, heartbeat still too fast, though Derek knew it was only nerves. It made him feel a little bit better that Chris was nervous, too. “I’d like that,” Chris told him. “What do you like for breakfast? I’ll cook, if you think you won’t mind coming over.”

            “I’m not picky,” Derek said with a smile. He had been ready to tell himself it was definitely not a date, but that was a bit hard to deny, what with Chris inviting him over alone for breakfast.

            But for now, it was getting late, and he still had a lot to do before he could go to bed, so he just nodded toward the edge of the Burn, where the human roads ended in a jagged line of broken concrete. Chris got the message and only stared at him a second longer than necessary before moving past him. He brushed shoulders with Derek as he went, though not in the mean, aggressive way many humans did.

            Derek walked him right to the edge of the Burn to the line in the pavement, and then stopped. Chris hesitated, and then turned just enough to see Derek again. “Thank you, for all of this. I’ll talk to Alan about the scales tomorrow, and let you know what he says. Will Vera be okay if I don’t sell them immediately?”

            “Yeah,” Derek said, waving him off. “That meal was enough for a couple days stupor. She won’t be hungry again until Monday.”

            Chris smiled. “Okay,” he said, and then continued to stand there awkwardly for a moment, as if he had more to say. He must have decided against it, however, as he just nodded. “Okay,” he said again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

            Derek nodded back. “See you tomorrow, Chris.”

            He watched until Chris had to turn the corner. He wouldn’t have parked too close to the Burn, but he also wouldn’t have parked too far, so Derek figured he would be fine. He allowed himself a couple of deep, calming breaths, though it did nothing to keep the smile off his face. If anyone had told him a week ago that he’d be setting up a date with a hunter – and not just _any_ hunter, an _Argent_ – he would have told them they’d gone mad.

            Well, maybe he was the one who’d lost it. Laura certainly seemed to think so.

            He winced at the reminder. She’d told him not to stay out past sundown, to come home in one piece, and the sun was definitely down now. The street lamps lit the human side of the street with a burnished, golden glow, the light just barely spilling over onto the ruined pavement of the Burn. The lights didn’t work on this side of the divide.

            He took one last look at where Chris had disappeared, ears still picking up the sound of his footfalls, and then turned to head home.

            The glowing, red eyes of an amalgamation were the last thing Derek saw.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

 

**Saturday Morning**

           

            “We’re not even open for another fifteen minutes, technically,” Stiles bitched at Chris as he unlocked the front door to the shop and let him in anyway.

            Chris ignored the comment, caught somewhere between nervous and excited about seeing Derek again, this time with no pretenses. This time he had made it clear he wanted to see the wolf just to see him. Not because of Allison, not to pay off a life debt, not to learn more about supers. Just to see Derek. It was terrifying, how quickly he’d gotten under Chris’ skin. It was, perhaps, more terrifying that Chris had let him.

            But he could still feel Vera’s thrum in his bones, and the feel of her smooth scales under his palm. He could still hear Allison’s voice in his ear, and see the faces of the children Derek had helped. He still remembered how warm Derek’s laugh had made him feel, and the way he had let Chris in, too.

            Maybe it wasn’t so bad, really.

            “I’m just meeting someone,” Chris told him vaguely.

            “You know, you’re not allowed to conduct that kind of business here,” Stiles informed him with a scowl as he moved behind the counter and took a seat.

            “It’s not that kind of business,” Chris said, before Stiles could get started on a rant about hunting. Chris had been here often enough to know exactly how Stiles felt about Chris’ job, but it had only been the opinions of a teenager before. Now, Chris thought it might hit a little bit too close to home and feel a little bit too much like all of the things he had found wrong with himself lately. “I’m meeting a friend.”

            “That’s worse!” Stiles exclaimed, without even looking at Chris as he began to open drawers, looking for something. “This isn’t a coffee shop, you can’t just come to hang out with your friends, we have actual-“

            “He’s your friend, too,” Chris said, just hoping to get him to shut up and relax. He seemed really on edge this morning. He seemed really on edge _most_ mornings, but this was different somehow. Usually he would at least make an attempt to be civil to Chris, even if he meant it only in a strictly professional sense.

            Stiles gave him a strange look. “ _My_ friend? Who- Derek? Oh my god. Leave him alone, will you? He’s got enough problems without some nosy hunter giving him more. He saved your life, you know, you could at least-“

            “Please stop,” Chris interrupted tiredly. “It’s not like that.”

            “Not like that?” Stiles scoffed, looking offended now. “I suppose you’re just meeting him here for fun, because hunters hanging out with werewolves-“

            It wasn’t any of Stiles’ business, except that they were meeting _in_ Stiles’ business, so Chris said: “He’s coming over for breakfast.”

            “Breakfast?” Stiles said, switching tracks immediately. “What does that even mean? Is that code for something?”

            “No, Stiles,” Chris said slowly. “It’s breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes and bacon and orange juice. People eat it and talk about… whatever people talk about over breakfast.” It had been a long time since he’d sat down to breakfast with anyone else.

            Stiles squinted at him suspiciously, but before he could say anything, the bell on the door jingled and they both turned to see who had entered.

            Chris froze at the same time as Allison did, eyes wide.

            Her gaze shifted infinitesimally to the side, to Stiles. “Did you _call him_?” she demanded angrily.

            Stiles held up both hands. “I didn’t call anyone,” he defended. “Dude was here when I got here. He says he’s waiting for Derek, if you can believe that.”

            Allison hesitated then, chewing her lip and looking over at her father. “I can,” she said at last. “They’re… something. Friends maybe.”

            “Friends,” Chris agreed, because there wasn’t a better word for what was going on. Not yet, anyway. “What’s wrong?”

            Shaking her head, Allison moved past the door and headed for the counter. “It’s nothing,” she said quickly, which meant it was definitely something.

            “Maybe I can help,” he said, following her only with his eyes. He missed her more for seeing her and knowing she still wanted to shut him out.

            “You can’t help,” she told him frankly. “You _wouldn’t_ help. It’s Lydia.”

            “Is she okay?” Chris asked, surprising himself and perhaps surprising Allison even more. A week ago that was definitely not the first question he would have asked.

            It was apparently the _right_ question, or exactly the wrong one, because she teared up, voice going raw. “I don’t know,” she said, looking away from him. He moved quickly, skirting the counter to get to her and wrapping her in a hug as soon as he was close enough, and she let him. “We walked down to the corner diner for breakfast, and she’s not allowed in, so I went in to pick up our order, and when I came out she was gone. I found a smear of- of-“ She just shook her head against his shoulder.

            He could guess what she had found, and it was nothing good.

            “We’re going to find her,” he said steadily. “I’m going to help you find her, okay?”

            Allison hesitated a moment and then nodded, pulling away from him. She wiped at her eyes and straightened up, turning back into the strong girl he knew she was. “I already called, but there was no answer. I checked the area, and then back home just in case, but she wasn’t there. I called Stiles to do a location scry and came over.”

            “That’s why you’re here early,” Chris said, and Stiles nodded. Stiles’ snippy mood suddenly made a lot more sense. He already had the components out on the counter. He must have gotten them out without Chris noticing, as they had argued. “It will work if she’s just lost, but not if someone took her or....” He trailed off. It wouldn’t work if she was already dead. It might not work anyway; location scries on supers that could shift phases between the living and the dead were guesswork at best, but he wasn’t about to say so in front of Allison. “And any hunter would have a scrambler crystal.”

            Stiles’ eyes darted nervously to Allison, and then back to Chris. “Yeah,” he agreed, and Chris’ eyes narrowed.

            “But?” he prompted, because he knew that look. Stiles was a terrible liar.

            There was the eye dart again, and Stiles licked his lips and started shifting things around in front of him to set up the spell. “But…” he said slowly, unfolding a map of the city and spreading it out on the clear space. “I don’t think it _was_ a hunter.”

            Chris gave him a puzzled look. It had to be a hunter. Although he didn’t know exactly where, he knew Lydia didn’t live in the Burn. She lived in one of the few areas of the city where supers with well-to-do Sponsors lived, and there was no one bold enough to kill a super in broad daylight in that sort of place. No one except a hunter getting a very, very good price.

            But then- “Hunters leave the body,” Stiles said at the same time as Chris thought it. “I mean, if there’s a body. They don’t kidnap people.”

            That was really the last thing the city needed; someone kidnapping supers on top of the mad man stealing hunter kills. “Okay,” he said, rubbing at his temple for a second. “Okay, do the scry. If it doesn’t work, at least we can say we did it. If it does work, we go get her back.”

            Stiles nodded and Chris and Allison both watched him work, shifting powders and stones and bits of metal around the map. He set a long crystal in the middle of it, and then glanced up at them as if to say _here goes nothing_ before closing his eyes and setting his hands at the edge of the map, thumbs on two of the pieces of metal. They looked like scales. Maybe they were.

            After over ten minutes of silence, the crystal began to glow and tremble. Chris had only seen a locating spell once, done by Claudia when they were looking for a hunter that had skipped town with a lot of the Company’s money. It hadn’t worked. Part of their job was not being traced, by any means- no locating spells, no GPS in their phones, no sticking around to be seen near the bodies they made.

            Chris jumped when the crystal leapt to attention, standing upright with its tip just barely touching the map. It shifted from white to red, and began to move around the map, slow but steady. Chris watched, mesmerized, as it took itself to a cross street and began to follow some kind of path. As it traveled, the color slowly, slowly shifted from red to green, until it came to a stop at the edge of the city, where the far end of the Burn let out into an abandoned warehouse district. Most humans considered the area part of the Burn, though it had not actually been involved in the war.

            Stiles slumped as the spell concluded, flopping back into his chair. Allison stared at the crystal, still upright and glowing rich green. “Is that were she is?”

            “If not, it’s damn close,” Stiles said, sounding spent. “And that,” he added, pointing at the crystal, “means she’s still alive, somewhere down there.”

            “Alright,” Chris said slowly, mind turning. Stiles was probably right; it wasn’t a hunter that had taken the girl, otherwise she’d just be dead. That meant it was likely a private citizen, which was potentially much worse. At least a hunter would only _kill_ her. “Let’s go, then.”

            “By ourselves?” Stiles asked skeptically. “Like, I know you’re a hunter, but the rest of us aren’t and whoever took Lydia knew enough and was strong enough to capture a banshee alive. Shouldn’t we get, like… back up or something?”

            “From who?” Allison asked, shaking her head. “Your parents are out of town for the weekend. The police won’t help us rescue a banshee. The Company might help us get to her, but it would only be to make sure she’s dead. There’s not anyone close enough; every second we wait might be a second Lydia doesn’t have.”

            Stiles rubbed a hand quickly over his close-cropped hair and blew out a noise, glancing over to Chris. “What about Derek, aren’t you meeting him? He’d help.”

            Chris glanced at his watch, brow furrowing at the time. He looked at the door, as if it would produce Derek on cue, but it remained stubbornly closed. “He should be here,” he said, a sinking feeling in his gut. He turned back to Stiles. “Is he normally late if he says he’ll be somewhere?”

            “No,” Stiles said, obviously following the same train of thought as Chris had. “But what are the chances? He probably just got held up at home. Cora hasn’t been doing well.”

            The door jingled and everyone jumped, turning to face the newcomer like a bunch of startled owls. Laura stood frozen in the doorway until she spotted Chris, and she was barreling toward him, full-shifted and snarling. Chris reacted on instinct, moving quickly away from the civilians and reaching for a weapon he hadn’t brought.

            “Shit,” Stiles said from somewhere to Chris’ right, and then there was a flash of red light and Laura stopped dead a few feet from Chris, her claws stretched for his throat.

            She writhed against the magic, but the binding spell held her fast. “Let me _go_ , Stilinski, or I swear you’re next,” she spat, teeth bared and eyes a bright, burnished gold. “He’s hurt Derek!”

            “Derek’s hurt?” Chris asked urgently, some mixture of relief and worry crashing through him. “Is he at your house?”

            “Of course not!” Laura snarled, lunging against the spell and getting a couple of inches closer. The locating spell had taxed Stiles’ magic reserves, which meant this spell wouldn’t hold long. “You took him! He didn’t come home last night, and all I could find was blood, and _your_ scent all over! What did you do with him?!”

            “Nothing!” Chris said, raising his voice to be heard over her before the spell broke and he had to deal with a furious shewolf hand-to-hand. “He took me out to see some of his friends, we met a dragon named Vera, and made plans to have breakfast together this morning, and then I _went home_. I was supposed to meet him here when the shop opened.”

            “He’s telling the truth, and you know it,” Stiles said even as she hesitated. “We were just talking about Derek being late.” He looked over at Chris, but Chris didn’t dare take his eyes off of Laura. “But we think we might know where he was taken, if it’s the same place they took Lydia.”

            That drew Laura up short, and she seemed to realize Allison was there as well. “Lydia was taken?” she asked hesitantly.

            Allison nodded, wiping at her eyes with a finger as fresh tears sprung up. “This morning, outside Mike’s Diner.”

            “We think we found her with a locating spell,” Stiles repeated, and whatever adrenaline had fueled Laura seemed to drain from her at the words. The red glow in the air dissipated as she stopped struggling against the spell.

            “That’s what I came to ask you to do,” she admitted, in the same tone of voice Allison had used earlier. “To find him with a spell.”

            “Okay,” Stiles said carefully, indicating Chris with a nod of his head. “He’s going to help us. Are you going to leave him alone if I let you out?”

            “Yes,” she said, claws retracting and eyes dimming to pale hazel-blue, the same as Derek’s eyes. The glow flared around her and then faded entirely, and she stepped away from Chris. “Where are they?”

            Stiles looked down at the map. The crystal was bobbing gently at a cross street, pulsing with greenish-blue light. “I’m not sure exactly. The crystal stopped at the corner of 8th and 19th, but it could be any of the nearby buildings. There’s a chance whoever took them put up some kind of ward, which wouldn’t stop a locating spell, but it could confuse the crystal a little.”

            She stared at the map for a few seconds, and then nodded. “Okay. I’ll meet you at the corner in twenty minutes. I’m going to get the others, so we can cover more ground.”

            Without waiting for an answer, she left them blinking at one another. Stiles shrugged and grabbed a pen from the counter. He marked where the crystal hovered, and then tapped the crystal. It clattered to the countertop and rolled to a stop.

            “So… we’re taking your car?” he asked, and Chris just nodded and turned to leave.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Morning**

 

            The warehouse district may not have actually seen the war, but it didn’t look like it. The buildings hadn’t had any kind of repair done in years, everything just left where it had been when the humans abandoned it. For the most part supers didn’t live here either; the buildings were too big for humanoids and had almost no insulation or ventilation. At the edge of the territory, they passed a small colony of cat-sized sphinxes, who all hissed and took to the sky like a flock of birds, but otherwise saw no life.

            Chris slowed to a stop at the corner of 8th, eyes on the pretty, blonde teen standing in the center of the intersection. Allison was already opening the passenger side door before he had put the car into park, and Stiles wasn’t far behind.

            “Erica!” Allison called as she ran over. The blonde – Erica – stiffened a little as Allison approached, and Chris recognized that she was a werewolf.

            “Nothing yet,” Erica said, scowling when she saw Chris getting out of the driver’s side. “Vernon and Isaac took the south side of 19th. Laura went north, and I’m supposed to send you north, too.” She gestured toward one of the big warehouses on Chris’ side of 19th Street.

            “You can’t smell anything?” Stiles asked, fiddling with the bag of things he had brought from the shop. “Can’t you just, like,” he waved a hand vaguely, “sniff out which one Derek got taken to? Or hear him, or-“

            “Yes, Stiles, I can, and that’s why I’m standing here listening to you instead of rescuing Derek,” she snapped, features shifting. Chris put a hand on his weapon, but Stiles didn’t seem concerned at all, so he didn’t draw it. Yet. “Just start looking.”

            With that, she dropped to all fours and bolted off to the south, her locating howl answered distantly from within one of the buildings. It sounded as though Laura had fetched an entire pack, and one that had no interest in being subtle or sneaking up on an enemy. Chris reminded himself it was good Derek had people who cared about him.

            “Come on,” he said, heading for the nearest north-side building. Allison and Stiles followed after, much quieter than the wolves had been. He stopped with one hand on the door handle, and turned to look at them both. “I don’t know what we’re walking into right now,” he said carefully. “And it could be very, very dangerous. The only reason you’re here is because I know you’d have just come here anyway if I didn’t take you. But I want you both to promise me that if things go sideways, you’ll leave. The keys are still in the car.”

            “I promise,” Stiles said, and Allison nodded grimly.

            He wasn’t sure either of them really meant it, but he’d told the truth. They’d be here with or without him, and they stood a better chance with him. In perfect honesty, _he_ stood a better chance with _them_ than if he’d come here alone. Allison had trained for self-defense with him, and Stiles was at least a semi-competent Emissary in training.

            Then again, whatever could take a werewolf and a banshee likely wouldn’t care much about three little humans. Maybe none of it mattered. They were about to find out.

            Chris turned the handle and opened the heavy door as quietly as possible. It creaked into the silence and he winced, but there was nothing they could do about it. Allison and Stiles stuck close to him as he moved into the building, keeping to the wall along his right. There were no electric lights, but the windows toward the ceiling let in a little sunlight, enough to see by as they traveled.

            A bump at his elbow drew his attention, and he turned to see Stiles pointing down the aisle they had just passed, to the far side. “Stairs,” Stiles hissed, barely a breath.

            The sound of scraping metal echoed throughout the warehouse as if on cue.

            Chris brought his gun to bear and heard Stiles pull something out of his bag. The noise sounded again, and Chris set off down the aisle. A dull thud, followed by another. The group was halfway across the warehouse by the time the door to the stairs crashed open and something spilled out onto the floor. Chris took aim, not sure what he was looking at until it scrambled to its feet.

            “Laura!” Stiles cried out, sagging against one of the stacked pallets in relief. “Oh my god, you scared the shit out of us!”

            “I found them,” she said, eyes meeting Chris’, and he realized something was wrong. Something was worse.

            “Are they…?” he asked tentatively.

            “Alive, both of them” she said, looking sick. “But maybe not for long. He’s got them in cages.”

            “Who does?” Chris asked firmly, recognizing shock. “Is there someone down there with them now? How many?”

            She met his eyes, looking stricken. “He’s been making monsters. He’s the one that’s been making monsters, and they’re down there with him, and I think he’s going to make them into monsters, too.”

            For a second, Chris couldn’t breathe. The mad scientist, Frankenstein’s apprentice. The one who had been stealing hunter kills and turning them into feral amalgamations. He was here, and he had Derek, and he had Lydia, and they didn’t have nearly enough firepower to handle this situation, but they didn’t have time to leave, and he wasn’t sure they could find help even if they did.

            “Go get your pack from outside,” he finally breathed out. “We’re going to need them.” They were going to need a lot more than a few beta werewolves, but they had what they had. Laura took off into the shadows and a second later they heard the quiet squeak of the exit door.

            “We can’t fight monsters like that,” Allison said, hushed. “You told me yourself that they don’t stop until they’re dead. The last one was bulletproof!”

            “We don’t have to go down,” Chris told her. “You shouldn’t go down, in fact.”

            “I’m not walking away!” Allison exclaimed angrily. “I’m just… saying we’re all going to die.”

            “We’re definitely all going to die,” Stiles said, passing them each a scroll and a bauble. Chris recognized the magical flash-bang, and assumed the scroll was either for healing or lock breaking. “But we’re definitely taking this guy down with us.”

            Chris’ eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

            Stiles looked up innocently. “I put a nebula scroll on the wall by the front door,” he said. “It’ll go off in about an hour. So… we should probably be… _gone_ by then.”

            Chris whapped Stiles upside the head and let him hiss protests for a second before he said: “You’re taking it off before we go.” The last thing they needed was another crater where part of the city used to be.

            “You _want_ people finding this dude’s lab?” Stiles asked, rubbing at the back of his head dramatically. “One guy with the know-how to raise the dead is enough, I think. We’ll either have them out in an hour, or we’ll take them out in an hour. I’m not letting this get any further. I know you think I’m just a kid, but I’m also an Emissary, and it’s our job to protect both sides, whether they like it or not.”

            Chris sighed, but before he could argue, the squeak of the front door echoed through the warehouse again and four shifted wolves turned up only a second later. They glanced uncertainly between Stiles and Chris, but when no one offered an explanation, Laura said: “We’re ready.”

             Chris wasn’t, but he put a hand on Allison’s shoulder, then gently on her jaw so she would look at him. “I love you. You know that, right?”

            “I love you too, Dad,” she said back, pressing her cheek against his palm. “Let’s go save them and get rid of this asshole.”

            He nodded and dropped his hand before heading down the stairs.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Morning**

 

            The laboratory, as it turned out, looked nothing like what Chris expected. There was no fancy equipment, nor any huge surfaces covered in witchcraft symbols. The acrid scent of necromancy hung in the air alongside the scent of blood. There were work lamps instead of candles and the tables set up at the center of the basement space looked to be made of stacks of wooden pallets.

            Along the far wall stood a row of cages, barely more than dog crates, but even from far away Chris could see the runes glowing on the bars. The metal, he assumed, was more for show than anything; that kind of magic could hold a beast with nothing more than words. These ones contained their kidnapped friends, laying prone and unmoving on the bottom of the cages. Chris moved closer to the doorway and hesitated.

            The door at the bottom of the stairs had been torn off the hinges and sat propped against the wall in the hall like an apology. Sprawled out on the floor to either side of the door lay two huge, motionless amalgamations, obviously meant to be guardians but… Chris realized with some relief that whatever force had animated the previous amalgamations had not yet touched these ones. They were just meat awaiting the spark of life.

            Chris’ gut went cold at the thought, at realizing how, exactly, the Apprentice was animating the amalgamations. A life for a life. He had made two shells, and taken two prisoners. He wasn’t using science or emissary magic; he was using some combination of alchemy and necromancy.

            As fortunate as it was that they would not have to battle the two huge amalgamations, the room appeared to be otherwise empty. Judging by the way all of the wolves held themselves strung tightly, ready to snap, that was not actually the case. Laura’s earlier banging to get the rusty stairwell door open had likely alerted the Apprentice to their arrival, which meant they were too late, or about to have a fight on their hands.

            They did not have to wait long to find out which.

            “You shouldn’t have come here,” said a disembodied voice from somewhere to Chris’ right, behind one of the many cement support pillars scattered throughout the huge room. “And you shouldn’t have brought them, Laura. Now I’ll have to kill you, too.”

            Chris kept his gun up and steady, aimed in the general direction of the voice. Without the living dead to defend him, the Apprentice might be an otherwise normal person, and a normal person they could kill. All they had to do what find him without getting killed first.

            “If you come out now, we can work this out peacefully,” Chris called out, voice strong and authoritative. He’d never had to reason with prey before, but then, he’d never had to hunt humans before either.

            A derisive laugh cut short. “Peaceful negotiation?” the Apprentice said. “With a hunter? I wouldn’t lower myself that far.”

            Something ticked in Chris’ brain, something he couldn’t quite grasp. “You might want to consider it,” Chris called back. “I don’t think you’re going to stand much of a chance without your monsters.”

            “Won’t I?” the Apprentice asked. “Half of you already belong to me. The other half… well.”

            The sound of something scraping along the floor, or maybe the wall, picked up from Chris’ left. He glanced without moving his aim from where the Apprentice’s voice had come, and saw something moving in the shadows across the room, beyond the flood lights. An amalgamation, one almost as big as the two dormant ones at Chris’ feet, and this one had been raised to life.

            Behind him, Laura said: “We’ll take care of the amalgamation. We can’t go against my uncle directly.”

            Uncle…

            _Our alpha, my uncle_ , Derek had said.

            _Their alpha, Peter Hale_ , Claudia had told him.

            They weren’t up against a human at all, he realized. They were up against an alpha werewolf, and one that had utter control of over half the help Chris had brought with him. The one that had left Derek and his pack to fend for themselves. The same one that, ten years ago, had killed Chris’ brother. And one that, apparently, had learned how to raise the dead to fight for him.

            Across the room, the amalgamation moved into the light, putting itself directly between their group and the two unconscious forms trapped in the cages, leaving Chris no more time to spiral. It was big, but still humanoid, looking like it had been crafted of shifted wolves and something else with much more dangerous claws. Its head was most definitely a wolf, an alpha by the red of the eyes, cloudy as they were with death.

            “Go, then,” Chris said, shakier now with revelation and adrenaline. He raised his voice. “You’ve taken our friends, Peter. We’re here to take them back, one way or another.”

            “Or another,” Peter said, this time from a different location. Chris hadn’t seen or heard him move at all. Across the room, the wolves hit the amalgamation full force and the tumble of bodies disappeared into the shadows again, snarls and barks echoing. “You can have them back in _pieces_.”

            “You would do that to your own nephew?” Chris asked, moving forward. He heard Allison and Stiles following, and risked a glance to make sure they were being safe and sticking to pillars and shadows. “Your own family?”

            “Says the human who let his father kill his brother,” Peter said. “I know you, Argent. You’re the worst of them, the most insidious of evil. Young Derek will be much safer when I’m done with him.”

            “He’ll be _dead_ when you’re done with him,” Chris said hotly. He caught a flash of movement ahead to his right, and switched between one row of pillars and the next, into the darkness, to follow it. An otherwordly shriek sounded in the distance, followed by a loud crash and the scrape of breaking cement, but Chris ignored it. The wolves could handle themselves. He hoped.

            “He made his choice, consorting with you,” Peter sneered from somewhere in the dark. “He would court the heir to the Company and condemn us all. I won’t allow it. I’ll see him dead before I see him ruined.”

            Another movement, and Chris took his shot. A snarl ripped the air instead of a ricochet, and Chris had just enough time to see the red of Peter’s eyes before the wolf was upon him. He dropped as Peter connected, twisting to put a foot into the wolf’s gut and shove, using his own momentum to throw the alpha off of him. Allison jumped out of the way and Chris saw her raise her arm to throw the bauble Stiles had given them. He shielded his eyes with his arm just as it shattered on the ground, and managed to miss the blinding flash of light.

            “Get them,” Chris told her, tossing his scroll in her direction. She withdrew without hesitation, bolting for the cages. Peter was on his feet again the next instant, stumbling blindly after the sound of her footfalls, so Chris shot him again, aiming for the spine. He missed, but it got Peter’s attention.

            Stiles motioned for Chris to back up and cover his ears, silent so Peter couldn’t follow the instruction as well. Chris did, watching as Stiles dropped a glowing scroll to the ground. As soon as it hit, it shattered into thousands of tiny pieces, all of them making the most horrendous noises- shrieking, clanging, banging, exploding. Peter howled, adding to the noise as he fell to the ground and tried to cover his ears too late.

            Chris swung around one of the pillars, out of sight and not tracked by Peter’s hearing after the aural attack. He could see Allison cutting into the spells of the caging with her iron pocketknife, a gift from Chris when she started training as a child. Iron consumed most common magic the way charcoal ate toxins, and he was proud she remembered. Prouder still that she still carried it with her.

            Then the fight between the amalgamation and the wolves spilled into the light again, crashing into the pallets that served as a table and scattering them, forcing Allison to jump out of the way. It was much larger than it had been when the fight started, and Chris realized it was made of more than just werewolves; it had to have true shifter blood. This one did not have the ugly stitching that the other amalgamations had, all the seams sealed by the shifter’s healing to create a more coherent creature.

            Unfortunately, it also seemed to be mutating with every injury, with every shift it made. The thing that heaved itself out of the rubble of the table had too many limbs, not all of them working right. It had open, toothy mouths in random places, all of them gnashing and some of them bloody. Laura dodged a swipe from an over-long paw and Erica replaced her, grabbing onto the wrist with her teeth. Their pack was not healthy enough to take their better fighting form as full wolves, ones that could have held a bite in a way Erica could not when another arm grabbed for her.

            All of this took only a few seconds before Peter was on his feet again as well, and Chris took another shot at something vital, but Peter moved just in time. He gave a furious snarl when the ricochet hit him anyway. Chris ducked behind his pillar as Peter threw himself in Chris’ direction, still too blinded to aim very well.

            “Stiles!” Allison called. “I can’t wake them up!”

            Chris kicked out hard at Peter when he whirled toward her voice, obviously having recovered his hearing faster than his sight. Chris vaguely recalled that werewolves were more sensitive to eye damage, sometimes taking months if not _years_ to heal from ocular injuries. It looked like he would have to get loud if he wanted Peter to pay attention to him instead of Allison and Stiles.

            “I’m over here, mutt,” he shouted before ducking behind a different pillar. “Having trouble finding your prey?”

            “Hardly,” Peter said, turning toward the sound of his voice. He cast about blindly, long jaws weaving from side to side as he listened, trying to triangulate. “I’m going to enjoy ripping you to pieces, Hunter. I’m going to enjoy it more when I put you back together again.”

            “You have to find me first,” Chris said, moving another pillar away. Peter turned, following the sound and then froze, nose lifting. Cursing, Chris leaned and took another shot, though he missed entirely as Peter darted away from him on all fours.

            Away from him, and straight toward where Allison and Stiles had managed to wake Lydia and Derek and were helping them out of the caging. Chris followed after at full speed, though it was clear Peter meant to ignore him entirely now. Thankfully Stiles had been paying attention to them; as soon as Peter got too close, the wolf hit an invisible wall and came crashing to the ground face-first.

            Chris recognized the warding spell and knew it wouldn’t take another hit. He did not have a lot of options left, so he did the only thing he could think to do- he leapt onto Peter’s back, arms around his neck, and threw his weight to the side as Peter attempted to stand. They came crashing back to the ground by momentum’s grace alone.

            However, Chris’ entire weight meant very little to the furious, fully-shifted alpha werewolf as soon as he recovered from the initial crash, and he reared up on his hind feet as soon as he had recovered. Chris’ boots couldn’t touch the ground, so he held on tight as Peter’s claws found his arm, tearing through his tough jacket and into flesh.

            Dimly, he was aware of Allison shouting “Lydia, no!” two seconds before Peter froze where he stood, claws still in Chris’ forearm, standing tall on his hind legs, huge jaws open in a voiceless snarl. Chris pulled himself up just enough to peer over Peter’s shoulder to see Lydia standing with her small hand splayed wide on Peter’s chest, her mouth open in a silent scream as well. He had only seen a banshee grab a soul once, and it was just as unpleasant a realization this time.

            Behind him stood Derek, electric-blue eyes riveted on his uncle. His alpha.

            “Now or never,” Lydia ordered through gritted teeth, her fingers pressed so hard to Peter’s chest they were turning white. “Do it.”

            Derek’s gaze shifted up, up, up, to Chris’ face, and he looked pale and scared and like he wanted to do anything except whatever Lydia was telling him to do. Chris could guess; Peter had to die and if the alpha spark was to stay in the pack, and it had to be Laura or Derek that did it. Laura was busy with the amalgamation that had not stopped when Peter had, which left…

            “Derek,” Chris began, voice wavering.

            “I’m sorry,” Derek breathed.

            Then he slammed his hand over the top of Lydia’s, claws in the spaces between her fingers. Lydia’s eyes paled out and Derek’s eyes went glassy as he fell into the same stupor as his uncle. The sound of combat from the shadows ceased entirely.

            Utter silence descended.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Morning**

 

            Derek was not certain where he was, but he was certain of where he was not. He was not standing in the warehouse where he had woken to Allison and Stiles and the sick feeling of too much conflicting magic having been used on him. He was not listening to his sisters and his adopted betas fighting for their lives against an amalgamation his own uncle had stitched together from the remains of people hunters had murdered. He was not standing in the shadow of his crazed alpha, looking up into the eyes of the hunter he had befriended.

            The world, it seemed, had taken three left turns and still wasn’t right.

            He reached out into the darkness with his mind because he didn’t have a body anymore. Something bright and warm and soft brushed up against him, something alien and beautiful, and the contact produced tinkling notes of ethereal music that made Derek want to weep. The sound of a banshee in her home phase sounded nothing like what came through in his world.

            _Come_.

            He followed, or she took him, or the world just moved around them maybe, though he was not sure how he could tell when everything was the exact same shade of black. All at the same time they were everywhere and nowhere and constantly in motion until they weren’t, until they arrived, a fact which Derek only determined because they stopped.

            As clearly as he felt Lydia, he felt the wretched, ruined power of his uncle, or at least the spark that had eaten him, the corruption that had replaced him the way minerals take the place of bone to make fossils. It was his uncle, or the shape of him, or the memory of his grief. It was the fossil of his uncle, made out of the raw emotions and powers that had existed when he died.

            _Peter_ , he said, and it sounded weird without a mouth, without sound.

            The creature did not move, curled in on itself the way children do to protect themselves. Derek could feel the injuries from here, the fear and the hurt and the loss. All that anger, burning like a sun, scalding and seething and lashing out.

            At the heart of it, the glowing ember of an alpha spark, fueling the fire.

            Lydia had told him what he would find, here, but he hadn’t realized it would be so bad. Everything Peter had felt when he received the spark – his sister, his mate, his children, all gone in an instant the day the Burn was formed – had corrupted the transfer of power. The spark had fed a transformation that would eventually kill him.

            Eventually had arrived.

            _Peter_ , he said again, soothingly. He pressed his mind against the heat of Peter’s rage to quell it. _You have to let it go._

            _They’re dead_ , came the response, tar-like and stringy. _If I let go, they’ll be gone._

            _If you don’t, you’ll be gone, too,_ Derek told him softly, reaching past the roil of emotion to touch the corrupted spark at the center of him. _We need you_.

            Derek did not back off when the spark defended itself, lashing and clawing and writhing in his grasp. It did not want to be pried from its current home, but he had no choice. The corruption that veined out from it had tendrils all over Peter and, perhaps more worryingly, branching out to some other connection. Derek had to stop it from spreading.

            While held captive in the basement, waiting to be taken apart and put back together, Derek had asked Lydia: “If I take his spark, will it kill me?”

            “I don’t know,” she had told him. “It might. You have to take it anyway.”

            That much he knew was true. Whatever else happened in the world, Peter was his responsibility, or his pack’s responsibility, at least. If he could not pry the spark from Peter while Peter lived, he would have to kill him here and take it. He did not relish the idea. Sparks taken by force, his mother had told him long ago, were wild. They remembered being killed, and they held grudges.

            Peter, however, was too weak to hold onto his power here, without the barrier of claws and teeth and flesh. Here, he was only a shabby, miserable echo of himself, and it was easy enough for Derek to destroy the bindings which held them to each other.

            The spark came loose in his hands-that-were-not-hands, and the world came crashing back.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday Morning**

 

            “Can we move them?” Chris asked, standing with the others a few feet away.

            Laura and the betas had torn the fallen amalgamation to pieces to keep it from ever getting up again. Chris had let go of his hold on Peter and joined Allison and Stiles to look at the strange, frozen scene before them. Peter still stood locked in a snarl, claws red with Chris’ blood, and Lydia and Derek still stood side-by-side with their hands on Peter’s chest. Blood dripped from where Derek’s claws pierced his skin, black and viscous and reeking of rot.

            “Probably not,” Stiles said. He had taken a seat with his back against one of the pillars and was digging through his bag again. “I don’t know enough about banshees to know what she’s doing with them, but moving them would probably stop it, and since Derek joined in voluntarily, it’s safe to assume they made some sort of plan.”

            “So we’re just supposed to wait?” Allison snapped. “What about your nebula scroll upstairs?”

            Stiles pulled his phone from the bag and checked the time. “There’s still half an hour on that. If they haven’t finished what they’re doing in another twenty minutes, then we-“

            Everyone startled back when Peter suddenly collapsed to the ground and Lydia started screaming and Derek stumbled backward, gasping for air, his blue eyes now a glowing red. Abruptly, Lydia’s scream ended and she, too, collapsed to the ground, though Allison rushed forward in time to catch her. Derek swayed on his feet, looking blearily between Chris and Laura before mumbling a single word.

            “Cora.”

            Then he, too, collapsed, caught partway by Laura only because she had faster reflexes than Chris. By the time she had maneuvered him to the floor, Lydia’s eyes were open and Allison was crying and hugging her. Chris was torn between checking on Derek and checking on Lydia, but the need for information won out and he moved to kneel beside Allison.

            “What happened?” he asked Lydia quietly, drawing both their attention. Allison went rigid, but Lydia just looked up and shook her head. “What did you two do?”

            “His alpha spark had corrupted,” she said, voice shaky and strained. “The way he got it… losing his whole family… Derek had to take it before it killed him.”

            Chris glanced to Derek, still out cold on the cement floor in front of Laura. “Won’t it kill him, too?”

            “Maybe,” Lydia said, struggling to sit with Allison’s help. “But it was going to kill him anyway, someday. Laura, we need to get him back to your den if he’s going to make it. Bring him to Cora. Don’t wait for us, just take him. He knows what to do.”

            Laura scooped Derek up without hesitation and looked at Chris. “Your car? It’ll be faster than us running on two legs while carrying him.”

            Chris looked at Laura, then back at Allison and down to Lydia before turning to Stiles. “Stiles,” he said sharply, causing the kid to jump. “Get everyone out of here before your scroll nebulizes the place. After it goes off, call the Company and report it. Tell them whatever you need to, to get them down here to clean up.”

            “And where are we supposed to go?” Stiles protested as Chris moved to leave them there.

            “Take them to your shop, or bring them to the den,” Laura snapped, eyes flashing. “Boyd, Isaac, Erica, help them get Uncle Peter moved out. We’ll see you at home.”

            That seemed to be all the motivation the young betas needed to spring into action, and Chris raised his eyebrows at Laura, impressed, before bolting with her for the exit. The stairs seemed much shorter going up them than going down had been, opposite of how it normally went when climbing stairs. They reached his car quickly and only had to shoo off a couple of sphinxes that were preening themselves on its roof. Laura settled Derek in one of the back seats, and then they were off.

            The drive might have taken longer than Laura to run it, since they had to find streets bordering the Burn that didn’t descend into rubble, but eventually they managed. Three-quarters of the way there, Derek woke, groggy and disoriented, but still himself. Whatever Lydia had meant about a corrupted spark, it wasn’t turning Derek into a madman yet.

            Chris parked right at the edge of where the pavement became too broken to drive on and helped Derek exit the vehicle so that they could stumble the rest of the way, Derek’s arm around Laura’s shoulder. Chris felt about as useful as tits on a dragon. All of his knowledge about supernatural creatures focused on how to injure or kill them. He knew absolutely nothing about treating them for injury or illness, nothing about how to help beyond trailing after Laura and hoping that Derek and Lydia both knew what they’d done, and that Derek knew what he still had to do.

            Apparently he did, because the second they entered the room where Cora was curled up on what passed for a bed, Derek shook them off and stumbled to her. She didn’t rouse at all when Derek practically collapsed on top of her, seizing her hands in his. Almost instantly his veins blackened and his eyes went red, and her veins darkened and after only a few seconds she opened her eyes like she’d been electrocuted.

            And then the screaming began.

 

* * *

 

**Monday Afternoon**

 

            Erica’s bright, concerned eyes were the first thing Derek saw when he woke, until she scrambled out of view. “He’s up!!” she shouted, way too loudly for the way his head pounded.

            It did not take long for the rest of the pack to surround him as he groggily got himself upright and pressed the heel of his hand to his aching head. He felt like he’d been run over by a truck and then electrocuted. “How long?” he asked, voice raspy and throat dry. His stomach grumbled loudly.

            “Two days,” Laura told him, passing him a sleeve of crackers. It was already open, and Derek could have kissed her for having them ready.

            “Cora?” he asked, before shoving an entire cracker into his mouth. Even such a bland taste made his stomach cramp up, and he was glad she hadn’t handed him anything richer.

            “She’s sleeping, but getting better,” Laura told him. She made room for Isaac to pass him a glass of water. “Peter too. Whatever you did with Cora, it affected him the same way.” She pursed her lips and then asked: “What _did_ you do, Derek?”

            Derek took a sip of the water to wash the cracker down and cleared his throat. “I destroyed his alpha spark,” he said quietly, knowing they would have felt that, at least. He had left them all without an alpha. “It was corrupted. It was killing him. It had probably been getting worse since he got it. I think he left to try to protect us, but it just meant we didn’t recognize what was happening. The corruption was spreading through our pack bonds. That’s what was making Cora sick. That’s why the meds weren’t working.”

            “And she’s going to be okay now?” Erica asked. “She’ll get better?”

            “We’ll all get better, I think,” he said. Maybe it wasn’t true, maybe they would carry on how they had been, but at least they would not get worse. “Lydia?” he asked.

            “Fine, as far as we know,” Laura told him. “Chris came by yesterday morning and dropped off food and water and a cell phone. He told us he was on his way to feed Vera, and to call if we need anything.”

            Derek laughed, a tiny, amused puff of noise. If he hadn’t been head over heels for the guy before, he thought this could definitely do it. He lay back against the wall and relaxed a little, taking another drink of the water and eating a few more crackers. The others watched anxiously, until he began to feel awkward.

            “I’m fine,” he told them, exasperated. “Or I will be. Go on.”

            The kids scattered, retreating with only a few backward glances. Laura stayed, long enough to toss a flip phone onto the bedsheets beside him. “You scared the hell out of everyone,” she told him quietly. The others would still hear, but they would ignore that tone of voice. “You could have died.”

            Derek stared at the phone. “We all would have died, if I didn’t.”

            “I know,” Laura said. “I’m glad you came back to us.”

            “Me too,” Derek agreed. He tore his gaze away from the phone to look at her. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

            “I didn’t do it alone,” she told him. “By the time I made it to Claudia’s to get a locating spell done, your hunter was three steps ahead of me. I’m not… saying that I _approve_ , but… maybe he’s not so bad.”

            Derek smiled. “He’s not _my_ hunter,” he argued, not sounding very convincing.

            Laura shot a pointed look at the cell phone lying next to him on the bed. “Does _he_ know that?” At his blush, she rolled her eyes and sighed. “When you’re mobile again, you should talk to him. At least say thank you.”

            Picking up the phone but not opening it, Derek nodded. “I will,” he promised.

 

* * *

 

**Wednesday Night**

 

            Chris sat at his kitchen table, halfway buried in a mountain of papers and binders and books. Most of it had come from Company headquarters, hard copies of by-laws and actual laws regarding the treatment and handling of supernatural creatures. Most of it was, reading with his new perspective, atrocious. In the four days since The Incident, he had covered pages and pages and pages in red ink, and wasn’t even halfway through yet.

            Laura’s words just kept running through his head. _Heir apparent to the Company_. The empire his family had built was going to fall to his shoulders at some point, and he would have control of its future. He was going to determine if it even _had_ a future, and although his gut reaction had been to tear it all down, he had thought of better ideas in the last two days.

            No matter what the Company’s past looked like, it was a major force in society, with a lot of money at its disposal. If he closed it down, even with an explanation of why, someone else would just start it up again for themselves. Hunters would not be immediately amenable to turning 180 degrees on their beliefs, or admitting they had been wrong, or that they had done terrible things. He had every reason to make that spin and he still found it difficult, but he had Allison helping him. If nothing else, he wanted to train the next generation of Company hunters to do better.

            He wanted to do more than just stop the Company from being a murder machine. He wanted to use it for good. He wanted to start repairs on the Burn, and start finding ways to help the Supers that lived there integrate into normal society better than the Sponsor program had ever done for them. He wanted to charge in head first and tear the world apart for them, but the world was pretty big and he couldn’t take it all on at once.

            So things would have to move slowly for now. Policies in his own area would have to change first. The amount of arguing and legal work that Chris would have to do was almost unfathomable, but he was already working on how to do it. His father was not getting any younger and had already made some noise about turning the whole shebang over to Chris to manage so he could retire. His cancer wouldn’t wait forever, after all.

            So, Chris had spent the last few days pulling documents and slowly working his way through editing them. Allison and Lydia had come by yesterday and the day before to help, much to his surprise. They had all gone to Claudia’s shop to get patched up, and Chris had finally officially met Lydia for the first time. He felt like even more of an asshole for his behavior, because Derek had been right; Lydia was smart and funny and totally in love with his daughter.

            Chris had apologized repeatedly to them both, and told them they were welcome in his home any time. He just had not expected they would want to take him up on the offer.

            Still, it had been nice. Even if working on correcting Company regulations was tedious and distasteful work, it helped to have good company. Lydia made them dinner and helped them to cross-reference actual laws with the policies they were editing. Her help had proved invaluable for preparing some of the early changes Chris could make to policies even without being top dog.

            He was just thinking they were running a little late for dinner when the buzzer to his building’s front door went off. Without setting down his current project, he got up and went to press the release key to let them in. It clicked and then dinged and he walked back to his chair, still reading the last paragraph he’d edited. It was, ironically enough, about banshees. Lydia would have some things to say about their work tonight.

            A moment later, there was a soft knock on his door. He looked up, not having sat back down yet, and called: “It’s unlocked.”

            Nothing.

            Chris’ brow furrowed and he set the papers down on the table before crossing to the door. Chris put his hand on the knife in his pocket, ready to draw. “Who is it?” he called, standing back from the door still.

            “It’s me,” came the reply.

            “Derek?” Chris asked, reaching for the handle and pulling the door open to find it was indeed Derek standing at his doorstep, in faded jeans and a soft sweater and a softer smile. “What are you- how did you-“

            “Allison told me how to get here,” he explained quickly. “I hope that’s okay?”

            “It’s okay,” Chris said quickly, stepping back to give Derek a path in. “I just wasn’t sure when I’d see you again.”

            Derek didn’t move yet. “Did you want to?”

            “Yes,” Chris admitted without hesitation, suddenly very keenly aware of the situation. Derek had found his home and come to visit well past dinnertime. “When you were feeling better.”

            “I’m feeling better,” Derek said, looking at Chris like he was searching for something. “You saved my life.”

            “You started it,” Chris said, the tiniest smile twitching at one corner of his lips.

            Derek’s eyes brightened a little in amusement. “Yeah, I guess I did. I guess I’m just wondering where it ends?”

            “Wherever you want,” Chris replied. He didn’t have to think about it, or rather, he had thought about it far, far too much in the past few days. However Derek wanted this to go, Chris had already decided he would follow.

            Derek gave a little nod, as if that had decided something for him, before he took two steps right into Chris’ personal space. Chris stayed right where he was as Derek’s hands found his jaw and gently pulled him into a kiss. Chris made a noise he probably should have been embarrassed about and kissed him back, surprised again at just how _warm_ Derek was, how warm his hands and lips and tongue were.

            When Derek finally did pull back, Chris had to force himself not to follow, not to reinitiate the kiss. He let Derek back away just enough to give them breathing space even as he realized he was trying to catch his breath. Derek was a damn fine kisser.

            “Then I believe you owe me breakfast,” Derek said, so close still that Chris could feel the whisper of the words on his lips.

            “It’s eight o’clock at night,” Chris pointed out.

            Derek pulled back a little more, and Chris wanted to kick himself until he caught sight of the smile on Derek’s kiss-reddened lips. Derek quirked one eyebrow and said: “Did I stutter?”

            “… Oh,” Chris said, before breaking into a smile. “Okay, then,” he agreed. “I would _love_ if you stayed for breakfast.”

 


End file.
